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LINCOLN: 
THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 


By  EUGENE  W.  CUAFIN,  LL.  B. 

OF   THE   CHICAGO    BAR 


"The  field  of  history  is  so  vast  that  the  student  derives 
his  completest  instruction  from  biographies." 

— Cushman  K.  Davis. 


Published  by 
LINCOLN  TEMPERANCE  PRESS 

92  La  Salle  Street 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 
1908 


Copyright  1908. 
JJv  EUGENE  W.  CHAKIN 


CONTENTS 


LECTURE — "LINCOLN:  THE  MAN  OF  SORROW"     7 


APPENDIX 


LINCOLN'S  TEMPERANCE  SPEECH  49 

FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS       -  -         -     69 

SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  88 

EMANCIPATION  PROCLAMATION  -         -     92 

THE  GETTYSBURG  ADDRESS  96 


1003564 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 


A  LECTURE  BY  EUGENE  W.  CHAFIN, 

Delivered  in  "The  Temple  Lecture  Course,"  in  Ebenezer  M.  E. 
Church,  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  February  25,  1907 x 


We  are  pleased  to  meet  such  a  large  and 
enthusiastic  audience  tonight.  I  have  not 
been  in  Philadelphia  since  the  Centennial 
was  held  here  in  1876  until  today.  I  am  glad 
to  be  here  again. 

Most  people  are  interested  in  American 
history.  All  ought  to  be.  We  are  becoming 
students  of  history  more  and  more  every  day. 
The  great  problem  is  how  to  study  it.  I  be- 
lieve we  should  burn  all  the  school  histories 
of  today.  It  has  become  so  large  a  subject 
that  we  cannot  teach  it  in  the  schools 
through  the  ordinary  school  book. 

The  only  way  we  can  truly  study  history  is 
through  biography;  by  reading  the  lives  of 
great  men.  All  the  important  events  in  his- 

JReported  by  Geo.  O.  Swartz,  stenographer,  Camden,  N. 
J. ;  Rev.  R.  E.  Johnson,  pastor,  presiding ;  music  by  the  King's 
Daughters'  quartet,  of  Streator,  111. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 


tory  surround  the  lives  of  great  men,  and  if 
we  would  teach  the  children  in  the  school 
and  in  the  home  early  in  life  to  read  of  the 
great  men  of  the  past,  we  would  not  only 
teach  them  history,  but  it  would  cultivate  a 
liking  for  it  so  they  would  go  on  in  later 
years  studying  and  becoming  familiar  with 
the  facts  which  have  made  us  the  great 
Nation  we  are. 

The  only  trouble  with  this  method  is  that 
we  have  so  little  good  biography.  It  is  only 
within  twenty  or  thirty  years  that  we  have 
been  getting  what  we  may  call  fairly  good 
biography. 

Washington  has  been  dead  more  than  one 
hundred  years,  and  many  biographies  have 
been  written,  but  a  good,  first-class  life  of 
Washington  has  not  yet  been  published.  I 
have  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  volumes  of 
Washingtoniana  in  my  library,  and  can  see 
they  are  getting  better  each  year.  We  may 
expect  to  get  a  first-class  life  of  Washington 
before  many  years. 

If  that  be  true,  what  shall  we  say  in  rela- 
tion to  Abraham  Lincoln  ?  He  has  been  dead 
over  forty  years,  and  there  has  been  no  good, 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 


true,  first-class  life  of  Lincoln  yet  written, 
and  none  of  you  will  live  long  enough  to  see 
such  a  life  published.  We  cannot  get  away 
from  our  prejudices.  We  are  too  close  to 
some  of  these  great  characters  in  history  to 
tell  the  whole  truth  about  them. 

Lincoln  is  the  most  difficult  character  in 
all  history  to  understand.  Tonight  I  wish 
to  emphasize  the  moral  of  his  life,  rather  than 
its  history.  I  intend  to  take  up  this  one 
phase  of  his  life  and  see  if  we  can  get  a  little 
closer  to  this  great  man — the  greatest  char- 
acter not  only  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States,  but  in  the  history  of  the  world  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  hardest  character 
to  comprehend  in  all  history.  That  is  why 
no  good  biography  of  him  has  been  written. 
No  man  has  yet  seemed  to  comprehend  him. 

There  is  one  thing  certain  if  we  are  going 
to  try  to  fathom  Lincoln  we  must  trace  the 
hand  of  God  in  his  life,  and  those  who  study 
the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  see  not  the 
hand  of  God  in  it,  study  it  to  no  purpose. 

I  am  going  to  speak  of  that  phase  of  his 
life  and  character  entitled  "Lincoln,  the  Man 
of  Sorrow,"  and  am  going  to  liken  him  in 


10  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

some  respects  to  the  "Man  of  many  Sor- 
rows" — Our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 
For  what  our  Lord  and  Saviour  is  to  Divine 
history  Abraham  Lincoln  is  to  American  his- 
tory. One  was  the  Saviour  of  the  World, 
the  other  a  saviour  of  a  Nation  and  a  race. 

Lincoln  was  born  in  a  degradation  very 
far  below  respectable  poverty,  in  the  State  of 
Kentucky,1  and  lived  in  that  poverty  the 
whole  of  his  childhood.  When  he  was  in  his 
eighth  year  the  family  removed  to  the  State 
of  Indiana;  before  he  was  ten  years  of  age 
his  mother  died — the  first  great  crushing 
grief  and  sorrow  of  this  boy.  When  he  was 
about  nineteen  his  only  sister  died  under 
very  distressing  circumstances.  Up  to  the 
time  he  was  twenty-one  years  of  age  he  had 
seen  little  of  real  Christian  civilization. 
No  joy  or  pleasure  of  childhood  had  entered 
into  the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  had 
lived  in  the  back  woods,  not  only  in  a  log 
cabin  but  in  a  log  hovel,  not  very  much  of 
clothing,  only  a  year's  schooling. 

Thomas  Lincoln  was  an  ignorant,  worth- 
Abraham  Lincoln   was  born   Sunday  morning,   February 
12,   1809,  in  Hardin    (now  LaRue)    County,  Kentucky,  three 
miles  from  Hodgensville. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  11 

less,  shiftless,  illiterate  man,  and  thought  it 
a  waste  of  time  for  young  Abraham  to  learn 
to  read  and  write,  as  he  could  do  neither — 
his  mother  could  read  but  probably  not 
write.  There  never  were  any  cords  of  love 
and  sympathy  between  Thomas  Lincoln  and 
Abraham  and  he  treated  the  boy  with  great 
cruelty.1  When  he  was  grown  into  manhood, 
he  always  wanted  to  get  away  from  the 
thought  of  his  childhood.  There  was  no 
day  in  this  child's  life  which  brought  him 
happiness,  and  I  say  to  you,  my  dear  friends, 
no  matter  what  else  you  do  in  this  world 
give  children  happiness.  A  happy  day  for 
a  boy  or  girl  means  a  thousand  days,  as  they 
live  it  over  and  over  again  as  the  years  go  by. 
Such  was  not  for  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  had 
not  a  day  in  his  childhood  that  he  wanted  to 
live  over  again.  Undoubtedly  that  had  a 
great  deal  to  do  with  his  melancholy  dispo- 
sition. He  was  not  the  jovial,  jolly  man  that 
some  of  you  think  he  was.  He  was  the  most 
melancholy  of  men.  He  had  the  blues  most 
of  the  time.  He  was  either  clear  down  or 
clear  up.  His  genius  for  telling  stories  was 

^Thomas  Lincoln  died  in  Coles  County,  Illinois,  in  1851. 


12  LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

the  safety  valve  that  saved  his  life.  It  lifted 
him  up,  he  laughed  and  made  others  laugh. 
His  life  was  either  a  comedy  or  a  tragedy 
most  of  the  time. 

When  he  was  twenty-one  years  of  age  he 
removed  with  the  family  to  the  State  of  Il- 
linois and  leaving  the  parental  home,  went 
to  the  village  of  New  Salem  in  that  State,  a 
place  of  about  fifteen  log  houses. 

He  lived  there  about  seven  years,  and  soon 
after  he  left,  the  village  went  out  of  existence 
and  a  new  town  was  started  near  there  call- 
ed Petersburg.  It  was  in  that  little  log  village 
that  Lincoln  discovered  himself.  He  went  to 
work  as  an  ordinary  laborer,  then  in  a  store, 
and  finally  bought  the  store  and  with  his 
partner  ran  it  a  few  months  and  failed,  leav- 
ing a  large  debt  on  his  hands  which  it  took 
him  years  to  pay.  While  he  was  living  there 
he  made  the  acquaintanee  of  a  beautiful  and 
cultured  young  lady  by  the  name  of  Ann 
Rutledge,  and  they  were  engaged  to  be  mar- 
ried. It  was  his  first  contact  with  real  Chris- 
tian civilization.  She  taught  him  grammar 
and  to  study  the  Bible  and  Shakespeare.  Two 
books  that  all  young  people  should  read 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  13 

every  day.  Lincoln's  familiarity  with  them 
had  largely  to  do  with  his  literary  style 
which  is  a  combination  of  both.  His  first 
earthly  joy  seemed  at  last  to  be  within  his 
grasp,  but  a  few  months  before  they  were  to 
be  married  she  died.1 

While  I  was  in  Petersburg  near  his  old 
home  last  year  on  the  12th  of  February,  to 
deliver  this  address,  I  went  to  the  little  cem- 
etery on  the  hill  and  the  sexton  pointed  out 
a  neglected  grave  with  a  little  headstone 
upon  which  was  simply  the  name  Ann  Rut- 
ledge,2  and  as  I  stood  there  with  uncovered 
head,  I  said  in  that  grave  was  buried  the 
heart  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Her  death  so 
worked  on  his  mind  that  his  friends  feared 
he  would  commit  suicide.  In  a  few  months 
he  went  about  his  work  again,  but  never  re- 
covered from  that  great  sorrow. 

He  was  elected  to  the  legislature  of  Illi- 

'Miss  Rutledge  died  Aug.  25,  1835,  of  typhoid  fever. 

'Beautiful  Oakland  Cemetery  is  about  half  a  mile  from  the 
city  of  Petersburg,  111.  The  headstone  is  a  rough  boulder 
about  two  feet  in  diameter  taken  from  the  roadside,  with  the 
name  "Ann  Rutledge"  rudely  chiseled  upon  a  level  place. 
The  entire  cost  probably  did  not  exceed  one  dollar.  It  is 
in  marked  contrast  to  the  beautiful  and  expensive  monuments 
to  the  rich  surrounding  it.  Withal  there  seems  .to  be  a  fit- 
ness about  it  for  this  Lincolnian  simplicity  suggests. 

"The  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor." 


14  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

nois,  served  four  terms1  and  distinguished 
himself  for  nothing.  He  went  out  of  the  leg- 
islature with  practically  nothing  to  his  credit 
as  a  statesman. 

The  four  legislatures  of  which  he  was  a 
member  gave  us  the  most  vicious  legislation 
in  the  history  of  the  State  of  Illinois. 

While  a  member  of  the  legislature  he  re- 
moved to  Springfield,  April  15,  1837,  which 
was  in  his  district,  and  began  the  practice  of 
law,  having  been  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1836, 
was  fairly  successful,  and  it  was  the  only  suc- 
cess he  attained  anywhere  up  to  the  Presi- 
dency. Soon  after  removing  to  Springfield 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Miss  Mary 
Todd,  whom  he  afterward  married.  He 
courted  her  for  several  years,  and  on  the 
first  day  appointed  for  their  marriage  Mr. 
Lincoln  did  not  appear,  and  of  course  there 
was  no  wedding.2  Lincoln's  conscience 

aHe  was  elected  in  the  years  1834,  1836,  1838  and  1840. 

"The  day  fixed  for  the  marriage  was  Jan.  1,  1841.  Lin- 
coln expresses  his  feelings  to  John  T.  Stuart,  then  in  Wash- 
ington, in  a  letter  written  at  Springfield,  January  23,  1841, 
as  follows : 

"For  not  giving  you  a  general  summary  of  news,  you 
must  pardon  me;  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  do  so.  I  am  now 
the  most  miserable  man  living.  If  what  I  feel  were  equally 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  15 

would  not  quite  allow  him  to  marry  her,  and 
he  could  not  face  it,  and  he  did  not,  and  ran 
away  from  it.  About  a  year  and  ten  months 
afterwards  their  friends  entered  into  diplo- 
matic negotiations  and  got  them  to  speak- 
ing together,  and  one  Thursday  they  agreed 
to  be  married  and  they  were  married  the 
next  day,  Friday,  Nov.  4,  1842.  Now  ordi- 
narily the  period  of  courtship  and  engage- 
ment is  the  happiest  period  of  one's  life  ex- 
cept that  which  is  followed  by  happy  mar- 
riage. 

Not  so  with  Lincoln.  They  were  not  hap- 
py days.  His  first  love  was  Ann  Rutledge 
and  he  doubted  whether  he  ought  to  marry 
another.  The  days  he  courted  Miss  Todd 
were  among  the  most  unhappy  of  his  life — 
except  after  he  got  her.  She  was  bright, 
finely  educated,  could  speak  French  as  well 

distributed  to  the  whole  human  family  there  would  not  be 
one  cheerful  face  on  the  earth.  Whether  I  shall  ever  be 
better  I  cannot  tell;  I  awfully  forbode  I  shall  not.  To  re- 
main as  I  am  is  impossible;  I  must  die  or  be  better  it  ap- 
pears to  me.  The  matter  you  speak  of  on  my  account  you 
may  attend  to  as  you  say,  unless  you  shall  hear  of  my  con- 
dition forbidding  it.  I  say  this  because  I  fear  I  shall  be 
unable  to  attend  to  any  business  here,  and  a  change  of  scene 
might  help  me.  If  I  could  be  myself  I  would  rather  remain 
at  home  with  Judge  Logan.  I  can  write  no  more." 


16  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

as  English,  aristocratic,  haughty,  her  ambi- 
tion colossal,  and  wanted  to  shine  in  society, 
and  was  one  of  the  ugliest  women  in  Illinois. 
There  is  only  one  State  in  the  Nation  where 
you  can  arrest  a  woman  for  being  a  "com- 
mon scold."  That  is  New  Jersey,  and  it  was 
a  good  thing  she  did  not  live  there.  This 
is  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  speak  of  in  a  lec- 
ture, and  none  of  his  biographers  have  said 
much  about  her.  I  would  not  speak  of  it  to- 
night only  that  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  know 
everything  about  this  man.  Everything  that 
occurred  in  his  life.  We  want  to  see  what 
made  him  the  great  character  that  he  was 
in  our  history.  In  order  to  do  that  we  must 
know  everything  that  entered  into  his  life. 
He  was  President  of  the  United  States  which 
made  her  Mistress  of  the  White  House  and 
therefore  I  have  a  right  to  tell  the  truth 
about  Mrs.  Lincoln.  To  illustrate  how  they 
enjoyed  married  life,  he  came  home  one  day 
very  tired.  He  laid  himself  on  the  couch,  and 
she  started  as  we  say  out  West,  "blazing 
away"  at  him.  One  of  the  neighbors  came 
in  and  said  to  him,  "Why  don't  you  jaw  back 
Abe?"  He  said,  "That  did  Mary  a  great 


LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  17 

deal  of  good  and  did  me  no  harm."  He  was 
a  philosopher.  Decided  to  take  her  for  bet- 
ter or  for  worse. 

His  married  life  was  not  a  congenial  one 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  No  happi- 
ness could  come  to  Lincoln  from  any  source. 

They  had  four  children.1  One  died  in  in- 
fancy and  one  died  in  the  White  House 
when  the  great  Civil  War  was  on  the  heart 
of  this  man  and  he  was  brought  down  almost 
to  the  point  of  being  crushed  by  the  death 
of  "Little  Willie."  It  was  almost  more  than 
he  could  stand.  But  you  must  understand 
that  the  death  of  Ann  Rutledge  brought  him 
nearer  to  God.  From  that  time  on  Lincoln 
was  a  student  of  the  Bible.  The  great  crush- 
ing blow  of  the  death  of  "Little  Willie" 
brought  him  still  nearer  to  God  and  I  do  not 

Robert  Todd  Lincoln,  still  living  and  resides  in  Chicago, 
born  August  1,  1843. 

Edward  Baker  Lincoln,  born  March  10,  1846,  died  in  in- 
fancy. 

William  Wallace  Lincoln,  born  Dec.  21,  1850,  died  in  the 
White  House  February  20,  1862. 

Thomas  (Tad)  Lincoln,  born  April  4,  1853,  died  in  Chica- 
go July  15,  1871. 

Mrs.  Mary  Todd  Lincoln  died  Sunday  evening,  July  16, 
1882,  at  the  residence  of  her  sister,  Mrs.  Ninian  W.  Edwards, 
in  the  house  where  she  had  been  married  November  4,  1842,  to 
Abraham  Lincoln. 


18  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

think  any  man  can  say  from  that  period 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  not  a  devout  Chris- 
tian. 

These  crushing  blows  of  great  grief  in  the 
lives  of  men  sometimes  bring  out  the  best 
there  is  in  them,  if  they  are  able  to  overcome 
and  rise  above  them  as  Lincoln  was  able  to 
do.  These  sorrows  kept  him  close  to  the 
common  people.  They  just  seemed  to  have 
to  come  to  this  man's  life  to  bring  out  the 
best  there  was  in  him.  Thereafter  he  had  a 
deeper  sympathy  for  the  parents  who  had 
sons  in  the  army  and  none  appealed  to  him 
in  vain  to  save  them  if  it  were  possible. 

In  1846  Lincoln  was  elected  to  Congress. 
All  of  his  campaigns  were  conducted  with 
great  bitterness  against  him.  This  one  when 
he  ran  for  Congress  was  the  least  bitter  of 
any  of  them.  He  ran  against  Rev.  Peter 
Cartwright,  the  great  preacher.  He  had  been 
there  only  a  few  months  before  he  made  a 
speech  against  the  Mexican  War.  This 
caused  his  defeat  for  re-nomination.  If  you 
have  read  many  lives  of  Lincoln  you  have 
found  that  there  is  not  a  biographer  who  tells 
the  truth  about  this  matter.  Every  one  says 
he  declined  a  re-election. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  19 

Oh,  will  the  time  ever  come  in  this  coun- 
try when  the  biographers  will  tell  the  truth. 
Let  us  have  the  truth  about  these  great  men. 
It  is  marvelous  how  people  like  to  stick  to 
some  old  lie.  That  George  Washington 
cherry  tree  and  hatchet  story  will  illustrate 
this  point. 

I  said  in  my  lecture  on  "Washington  as  a 
Statesman,"  at  one  of  our  Chautauquas  last 
summer,  that  the  story  about  the  cherry  tree 
was  a  pure  fabrication.1  There  never  was 
a  word  of  truth  in  it.  After  the  lecture  a  Sab- 
bath school  teacher  came  to  me  and  said, 
"Mr.  Chafin  I  hope  you  will  never  tell  an- 
other American  audience  that  that  story  was 
not  true.  It  is  such  a  nice  story  to  tell  my 
Sabbath  school  class.  It  has  such  a  good 
moral  to  it."  Just  think  of  that  old  lie  hav- 
ing a  good  moral  to  it. 

JThe  story  was  nat  in  the  first  "Life  of  Washington,"  writ- 
ten by  "M.  L.  Weems,  formerly  pastor  of  Mount  Vernon 
parish,"  published  a  few  years  before  the  death  of  Washing- 
ton, Dec.  14,  1799.  It  first  appeared  in  the  fifth  edition  pub- 
lished in  1806  and  was  copied  bodily  from  an  English  gen- 
tleman's sketch  of  his  son,  which  appeared  in  England  in 
1799.  Weems  says  it  was  communicated  to  him  by  "an  aged 
lady,"  who  was  a  distant  relative.  I  think  Weems  was  the 
most  cheerful  liar  of  his  time,  or,  as  Henry  Fielding,  the 
author  of  "Tom  Jones,"  one  of  the  first  great  novels  of  the 
world,  said  of  the  opposing  lawyer,  "With  him,  truth  is  a 
virtue  which  becomes  very  much  fatigued  by  exercise." 


20  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

Tell  the  truth  about  Lincoln.     He  could 
not  get  the  re-nomination.     He  wanted  to 
stay  in  Congress  and  if  he  had  not  chosen  to 
stay  there  Mrs.  Lincoln  wished  to  continue 
to  be  a  Congressman's  wife  and  that  would 
have  settled  it.    His  speech  against  the  Mex- 
ican War  put  him  out  of  Congress  and  end- 
ed his  political  career  for  the  time  being.    I 
see  the  hand  of  God  in  it.    The  Almighty  was 
reserving  Lincoln  to  save  this  Nation.    If  he 
had  been  re-elected  in  1848  he  would  have 
been  in  the  Congress  that  passed  the  "com- 
promise measures"  of   1850,  including  the 
Fugitive  Slave  law.  If  he  had  had  a  career  in 
Congress  at  that  time  and  taken  a  part  in  the 
Congressional  turmoils  preceding  the  war 
he  would  never  have  been  President.     If  he 
had  voted  against  the  Fugitive  Slave  law,  he 
would  never  have  been  nominated,  and  if  he 
had  voted  for  it  he  would    not    have    been 
elected. 

Does  not  the  truth  fit  him  better  than  the 
untruth?  The  artist  who  takes  a  line  out  of 
his  rugged  face,  or  the  author  who  takes  a 
true  line  out  of  his  history  is  an  enemy  of 
truth. 


LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  21 

Does  it  not  appear  that  Almighty  God  was 
saving  this  man  for  a  great  work?  He  then 
returned  to  Springfield  and  settled  down  to 
the  practice  of  law,  the  deadest  politician  in 
Illinois.  There  was  great  grief  in  the  Lin- 
coln home.  Mrs.  Lincoln  had  to  leave  Wash- 
ington society.  It  undoubtedly  furnished 
an  occasion  when  he  would  rather  have  heard 
her  speak  French  than  English.  He  then 
determined  to  withdraw  permanently  from 
politics  and  make  a  good  lawyer  of  himself. 
For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  settled  down 
to  the  serious  study  of  books.  It  was  his 
habit  to  read  men  more  than  books.  He  em- 
braced this  opportunity  as  he  could  not  have 
done  if  he  had  stayed  in  Congress,  and  be- 
came a  good  lawyer. 

The  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
on  May  30,  1854,  aroused  his  indignation 
and  brought  him  again  into  the  political  are- 
na. He  saw  in  it  the  dangers  which  precip- 
itated secession.  On  October  16  he  made 
one  of  the  five1  great  speeches  which  formu- 

'The  five  great  speeches  were  those  delivered  at 

Springfield,  111.,  Feb.  22,  1842; 

Peoria,  111.,  Oct.  16,  1854; 

Springfield,    111.,    June    16,    1858; 

Columbus,  O.,   Sept.  16,  1859,  and 

Cooper  Institute,  N.  Y.  City,  Feb.  27,  1860. 


22  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

lated  his  political  creed  (in  reply  to  Senator 
Douglas)  on  the  Kansas-Nebraska  law, 
which  repealed  the  Missouri  Compromise. 

He  became  a  candidate  for  the  legislature 
and  was  elected  in  November,  1854.  The  re- 
turns showed  a  majority  in  the  legislature 
opposed  to  the  re-election  of  Senator  Shields 
and  in  favor  of  the  principles  Lincoln  had 
advocated  during  the  campaign.  He  at  once 
became  a  candidate  for  the  United  States 
Senate  and  resigned  his  seat  in  the  legisla- 
ture. When  the  balloting  took  place  on  Feb. 
8,  1855,  Lincoln  had  forty-seven  votes  and 
Lyman  Trumbull  five.  Four  members  were 
controlled  by  State  Senator  John  M.  Palmer 
and  would  not  vote  for  Lincoln,  and  it  took 
fifty-one  to  elect.  On  the  eleventh  ballot 
Lincoln  had  his  name  withdrawn  and  Judge 
Trumbull  was  elected.  His  defeat  was  Prov- 
idential. Had  he  gone  to  the  Senate  and 
been  prominent  in  all  the  questions  that  led 
up  to  the  secession  he  would  not  have  been 
nominated  for  President.  God  was  saving 
him  for  the  great  work  of  preserving  this  Na- 
tion. He  again  went  back  to  his  law  office 
and  Mrs.  Lincoln  spent  the  coming  years  in 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  23 

Springfield  instead  of  Washington  society. 

In  1858  Lincoln  was  again  nominated  for 
the  Senate  and  the  seven  great  joint  debates1 
took  place  between  him  and  Douglas,  but 
when  it  was  all  over,  Lincoln  was  again 
Providentially  defeated.  He  had  to  go  back 
to  Springfield  and  practice  law.  Grief  again 
in  the  Lincoln  home.  Oh,  if  she  could  only 
have  been  a  Senator's  wife! 

The  next  year  he  attempted  lyceum  lectur- 
ing on  the  subject  "Discoveries,  Inventions 
and  Improvements/'  which  proved  a  dismal 
failure. 

A  few  months  ago  I  visited  Lincoln's  old 
home  in  Springfield,  a  modest  little  frame 
house  which  perhaps  cost  $3,000.00,  the  only 
real  estate  that  Lincoln  ever  owned.  It  is 
now  owned  by  the  State  of  Illinois,  and  while 
there  was  shown  by  the  attendant  the  sofa 
upon  which  Miss  Mary  Todd  entertained 
both  Douglas  and  Lincoln  while  courting  her 


debates  took  place  as  follows: 
Ottawa,  111.,  August  21,  1858. 
Freeport,  111.,  August  27,  1858. 
Jonesboro,   111.,  Sept.   15,   1858. 
Charleston,  111.,  Sept.  18,  1858. 
Galesburg,  111.,  Oct.  7,  1858. 
Quincy,   111.,   Oct.    13,    1858. 
Alton.   111..   Oct.   15.   1858. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 


in  her  sister's  home.  That  was  the  first  time 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  got  the  better  of  Lincoln 
— when  he  didn't  get  her. 

During  the  debate  Lincoln  said  if  Douglas 
won  the  Senatorship  he  would  never  be  Pres- 
ident of  the  United  States.  He  might  well 
have  said  that  if  Lincoln  is  beaten  for  the 
Senatorship  then  he  will  have  a  chance  for 
the  Presidency.  If  Lincoln  had  been  elected 
Senator  in  1858  he  would  never  have  been 
President.  No  man  has  yet  gone  from  the 
Senate  Chamber  to  the  White  House.  Sena- 
tors Seward,  Cameron,  and  Chase  tried  it  in 
1860,  and  many  other  Senators  at  different 
periods. 

Lincoln  was  a  man  who  always  arose  to 
the  greatness  of  the  occasion.  That  is  the 
sign  of  greatness,  and  there  have  been  but 
few  great  men  in  the  world's  history  and 
very  few  in  American  history.  We  think  of 
Presidents  and  Cabinet  officers  and  Govern- 
ors and  Senators  and  Congressmen  as  big 
men.  They  are  big  on  small  occasions,  but 
usually  small  on  great  occasions.  There  are 
only  a  few  great  men  on  great  occasions  and 
Lincoln  was  one  of  them.  Lincoln  had  been 


LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  25 

talked  of  for  the  Presidency.  He  was  invited 
to  deliver  an  address  in  New  York  City  at 
Cooper  Institute  on  February  27,  I860.1  All 

JOf  this  speech  Joseph  H.  Choate  said : 

"It  is  now  forty  years  since  I  first  saw  and  heard  Abraham 
Lincoln,  but  the  impression  he  left  on  my  mind  is  inefface- 
able. After  his  great  successes  in  the  West  he  came  to 
New  York  to  make  a  political  address.  /He  appeared  in  every 
sense  of  the  word  like  one  of  the  plain  people  among  whom 
he  loved  to  be  counted.] At  first  sight  there  was  nothing 
impressive  or  imposing  froout  him,  except  that  his  great 
stature  singled  him  out  from  the  crowd;  his  clothes  hung 
awkwardly  on  his  giant  frame ;  his  face  was  of  a  dark  pallor J 
without  the  slightest  tinge  of  color;  his  seamed  and  rugged 
features  bore  the  furrows  of  hardship  and  struggle:  his  deep- 
set  eyes  looked  sad  and  anxious ;  his  countenance  in  repose 
gave  little  evidence  01  that  brain  power  which  had  raised 
him  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  station  among  his  country- 
men. As  he  talked  to  me  before  the  meeting  he  seemed  ill  at 
ease,  with  that  sort  of  apprehension  which  a  young  man  might 
feel  before  presenting  himself  to  a  new  and  strange  audience 
whose  critical  disposition  be  dreaded./* 

"It  was  a  great  audience,  including  all  the  noted  men — all 
the'learned  and  cUlluied  uf  liib  yaity  in  Mew  York,  editors, 
clergymen,  statesmen,  lawyers,  merchants,  critics.  They  were 


ill  very  curious  to  hear  him.  His  fame  as  a  powerful  speak- 
er had  preceded  him,  fcnd  exaggerated  rumor  oi  his  wit  nad 
reaches  the  Last.  When  Mr.  Bryant  presented  him  on  the 


high  platform  of  the  Cooper  Institute  a  vast  sea  of  eager, 
upturned  faces  greeted  .him,  full  of  intense~curiosity  jogj£e 
What  this  rude  child  ot  the  peo'pTe  was  like,  he  was  equal  to 
the  "oTCasiorE When  he  spoke  he  was  transformed ;  his  eves 
kindled,  his  voice  rang,  his  face  shone  and  seernejL-tO-_light 


ulTthe  whole  assem.5Ty:     For  .an  hojjr..jan 
audience  in  the   hollo'  w  of  his   hand.  / 
and  manner  of  delivery  were  severely  'simple.     What  Lowell 
'"  ' 


/ 

'si 

"Great  birtlplidlies  ui  ihe  Bible'1'  with  which  he 
was  so  familiar,  were  reflected  in  his  discourse.  With  no 
attempt  at  ornament  or  rhetoric,  without  parade  or  pretense, 
he  spoke  straight  to  the  point.  If  any  came  expecting  the 
turgid  eloquence  or  the  ribaldry  of  the  frontier  they  must 
have  been  startled  at  the  earnest  and  sincere  purity  of  his 


26  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

political  New  York  turned  out  to  hear  him. 
They  said  let  us  go  and  we  will  have  a  good 
chance  to  laugh,  and  we  shall  enjoy  it.  Wil- 
liam Cullen  Bryant  introduced  him,  and 
Abraham  Lincoln  stepped  forward  and  de- 
livered an  address  an  hour  and  a  half  in 
length.  No  one  smiled.  He  knew  that  to 
go  to  New  York  and  make  a  speech  that 

utterances.  It  was  marvelous  to  see  how  this  untutored  man, 
by  mere  self  discipline  and  the  chastening  of  his  own  spirit, 
had  outgrown  all  meretricious  arts,  and  found  his  way  to  the 
grandeur  and  strength  of  absolute  simplicity. 

"He  spoke  upon  the  theme  which  he  had  mastered  so 
thoroughly.  He  demonstrated  by  copious  historical  proofs 
and  masterlyjogic  that  the  iathersjwho  created  the. Constitu- 
tion m_orgefto^  _igrm_SL_morc  perfect-""'"",  .._t"  establish 
justice,  arid  to  secureTthe  blessings  of  liberty  to  themselves 
and  their  posterity,  intended  to  empower  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment to  exclude  slavery  from  the  territories.  In  the  kindliest 
spirit  he  protested  against  the  avowed  threat  of  the  southern 
states  to  destroy  the  Union  if,  in  order  to  secure  freedom  in 
those  vast  regions,  out  of  which  future  states  were  to  be 
carved,  a  Republican  President  were  elected.  He  closed  with 
an  appeal  to  his  audience,  spoken  with  all  the  fire  of  his 
aroused  and  kindling  conscience,  with  a  full  outpouring  of  his 
love  of  justice  and  liberty,  to  maintain  their  political  pur- 
pose on  that  lofty  and  unassailable  issue  of  right  and  wrong 
which  alone  could  justify  it  and  not  to  be  intimidated  from 
their  high  resolve  and  sacred  duty  by  any  threats  of  destruc- 
tion to  the  government  or  of  ruin  to  themselves.  He  con- 
cluded with  this  telling  sentence,  which  drove  the  whole  argu- 
ment home  to  all  our  hearts: 

"'Let  us  have  faith  that  right  makes  might,  and  in  that 
faith,  let  us,  to  the  end,  dare  to  do  our  duty,  as  we  under- 
stand it.' 

"That  night  the  great  hall,  and  the  next  day  the  whole 
city,  rang  with  delighted  applause  and  congratulations,  and 
he  who  had  come  as  a  stranger  departed  with  the  laurels  of  a 
great  triumph." 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  27 

would  make  everybody  laugh  would  not 
stamp  him  as  a  man  big  enough  for  the  Pres- 
idency of  the  United  States.  Instead  he  in- 
terpreted the  conception  of  the  founders  of 
the  National  Government,  on  the  slavery 
question,  in  the  light  of  the  constitution,  as 
no  other  man  had  in  all  our  history.  It  was 
the  greatest  constitutional  argument  against 
the  position  of  the  South  since  Webster's  re- 
ply to  Hayne,  and  was  not  second  to  it.1  He 
arose  to  the  greatness  of  the  occasion.  That 
speech  ought  to  have  prevented  the  Civil 
War.  It  would  have  prevented  secession, 
had  not  the  South  appealed  from  reason  and 
logic  to  the  sword.  From  that  day  Abraham 
Lincoln  was  an  available  candidate  for  the 
Presidency.  I  wish  you  would  all  read  that 
speech,  as  his  character  is  stamped  on  every 
page  of  it,  and  especially  the  last  sentence, 
and  every  American  ought  to  have  it  indeli- 
bly impressed  on  his  memory,  and  act  on  it 
on  all  civic  occasions.  He  closed  that  great 
speech  with  these  words :  "Let  us  have  faith, 

Daniel  Webster,  Senator  from  Massachusetts,  made  his 
famous  reply  to  Senator  Robert  Y.  Hayne  of  South  Carolina 
in  the  U.  S.  Senate  Jan.  26,  1830,  on  the  question  of  State 
Sovereignty. 


28  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

that  right  makes  might,  and  in  that  faith,  let 
us,  to  the  end,  dare  to  do  our  duty  as  we  un- 
derstand it."  Oh,  if  all  Americans  would  act 
upon  that,  we  would  have  better  civil  gov- 
ernment that  we  now  have. 

We  have  now  traced  the  career  of  Lincoln 
up  to  1860.  What  is  there  about  his  record 
that  should  have  made  him  the  proper  can- 
didate for  the  Presidency?  He  could  not  suc- 
cessfully run  a  grocery  store  in  a  village 
composed  of  one  hundred  inhabitants.  He 
had  been  a  failure  in  the  legislature.  He  had 
been  a  failure  in  Congress  from  any  worldly 
standpoint.  He  had  failed  twice  to  be  elected 
United  States  Senator.  He  had  made  a  fail- 
ure of  lyceum  lecturing.  He  had  been  a  suc- 
cessful lawyer  as  many  other  men  had.  Why 
was  it  that  the  Nation  turned  toward  him 
as  the  man  to  be  President  of  the  United 
States  in  one  of  the  most  trying  times  in  the 
history  of  our  country.  When  had  he  ever 
shown  executive  ability  ?  He  had  never  been 
president  of  a  village,  mayor  of  a  city  or  gov- 
ernor of  a  state.  Why  should  he  have  been 
chosen?  My  answer  to  that  is,  because  of 
his  great  character.  The  people  believed  in 


LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  29 

him.  They  had  faith  in  his  honesty.  He  was 
called  "Honest  Old  Abe."  It  was  in  a  period 
of  great  moral  awakening;  and  they  were 
looking  for  a  man  to  represent  a  great  moral 
question.  All  people  had  faith  in  his  integ- 
rity1 and  character.  That  was  one  thing 
that  stood  before  the  American  people  above 
everything  else,  and  I  think  the  day  and  hour 
has  come  when  we  should  teach  this  gener- 
ation of  people  that  that  was  the  one  great 
reason  why  this  man  with  his  limited  ex- 
perience and  with  the  surrounding  circum- 
stances of  his  life  was  selected  to  be  the  Pres- 
ident of  the  United  States.  What  gave  him 
this  character?  I  shall  attribute  the  founda- 
tion of  it  to  the  fact  that  from  his  youth  he 
chose  between  right  and  wrong  and  was  a 
total  abstainer  from  intoxicating  liquor, 
from  tobacco,  from  profanity  and  he  never 
gambled;  the  four  great  vices  that  were  so 
common  with  the  people  among  whom  he 
mingled.  And  because  he  chose  between 
right  and  wrong  regardless  of  his  associates, 
and  kept  away  from  these  vices,  he  built  a 
character  that  made  him  the  man  for  the 
Presidency  in  the  minds  of  the  people.  There 


30  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

has  not  been  a  biographer,  not  a  single  one, 
who  has  written  a  page  on  that  part  of  his 
life,  and  Nicolay  and  Hay,  who  wrote  his  life 
in  ten  volumes,  which  should  have  been  the 
standard  life  of  Lincoln  for  all  time,1  did  not 
find  room  to  refer  to  these  things.  Lincoln, 
on  the  22nd  day  of  February,  1842,  made  one 
of  the  greatest  temperance  speeches  that  has 
ever  been  made  in  this  country.2  He  asked 
people  to  sign  the  pledge  in  the  "Washing- 
tonian  Movement"  and  was  a  member  of  the 
Sons  of  Temperance.  In  1855  he  spent  five 
or  six  weeks  advocating  the  adoption  of  a 
prohibition  law  then  submitted  to  a  vote  of 
the  people  in  Illinois.  It  is  said  they  left 
these  facts  out  because  they  thought  it 
would  hurt  the  sale  of  the  book.  Oh!  the 
time  will  soon  come  when  the  American  peo- 
ple will  not  be  ashamed  to  say  that  Abraham 

'No  two  men  in  tl»e  United  States  knew  Lincoln  better  than 
John  Hay  and  John  G.  Nicolay,  who  were  his  private  secre- 
taries, but  it  is  a  singular  fact  that  no  man  ever  writes  a  good 
true  biography  of  an  intimate  friend  or  companion  or  even 
contemporary.  He  is  more  ap.t  to  see  the  small  things  in  his 
life  than  the  large  ones.  Coming  ages  are  looking  for  the 
big  things  he  did  which  have  had  an  effect  on  civilization.  He 
sees  in  every  line  how  it  is  likely  to  affect  the  family  or  asso- 
ciates of  his  subject  and  himself  in  their  good  opinion.  It 
is  easier  to  tell  the  whole  truth  when  they  are  dead. 

*See  Appendix. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  31 

Lincoln  never  used  alcohol  or  tobacco,  or 
profanity,  or  engaged  in  gambling. 

I  would  put  in  the  biographies  of  this 
great  man  and  teach  this  generation  that 
'tfie  most  valuable  asset  in  any  position  of 
life  is  character.  There  was  no  other  reason 
for  the  nomination  of  Abraham  Lincoln  for 
the  Presidency.  The  convention  met,  Lincoln 
was  nominated  and  elected.  Ordinarily  the 
four  months  between  election  and  inaugura- 
tion is  a  period  of  great  happiness  for  a  Presi- 
dent-elect. The  whole  world  is  applauding 
him,  politicians  and  statesmen  of  all  parties 
praising  him;  a  time  of  great  joy.  Not  so 
with  Lincoln.  Nothing  but  grief  and  sor- 
row. The  official  vote  had  hardly  been  de- 
clared before  the  news  came  that  South 
Carolina  had  seceded  and  other  States  fol- 
lowed. What  did  it  mean?  That  Lincoln 
had  to  sit  there  at  Springfield  for  four  long 
months  with  his  hands  tied,  could  neither 
speak  nor  act  and  see  the  Nation  being  torn 
to  pieces,  leaving  to  him  the  task  of  mend- 
ing it. 

He  went  to  the  Presidency  with  less  politi- 
cal party  support  than  any  man  who  was 


32  LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

ever  President.  His  own  party  trembled  for 
him.  They  said  this  untried  man  who  has 
never  shown  any  executive  ability  we  have 
elected  President  of  the  Uinted  States,  and 
he  is  the  man  who  is  to  solve  the  mightiest 
problems  in  our  history.  They  doubted  him; 
they  said  he  was  probably  a  weak  man;  that 
in  the  Presidency  he  might  let  the  Nation 
be  destroyed. 

When  inauguration  day  came  on  the 
Fourth  of  March,  1861,  and  Lincoln  stepped 
to  the  East  portico  of  the  Capitol  to  deliver 
his  inaugural  address,1  he  then  had  it  in  his 
power  to  destroy  this  Nation  in  a  fifteen 
minutes  speech,  but  he  did  not.  He  arose  to 
the  greatness  of  the  occasion.  He  was  a 
Nationalist.  He  had  learned  the  principles 
of  Nationalism  from  'George  Washington 
and  John  Marshall;  and  where  they  left  the 
cords  of  Nationalism  they  were  gathered  up 
by  Lincoln  and  woven  into  his  inaugural  ad- 
dress, and  he  never  lost  sight  of  them  until 
they  became  the  accepted  law  of  the  land  at 
Appomattox. 

After  he  had  delivered   it,   stating  sub- 

'See  Appendix. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  33 

stantially  that  we  were  a  Nation,  and  his 
oath  of  office  would  make  him  preserve  it  to 
the  very  last,  the  country  breathed  easier. 
He  had  said  in  words  what  the  Nation  felt 
but  could  not  express.  All  the  principal  men 
of  the  Nation  saw  that  he  was  the  man.  He 
arose  to  the  greatness  and  dignity  of  the  oc- 
casion in  that  inaugural  address,  the  great- 
est in  history,  for  in  it  he  laid  the  foundation 
to  save  the  Nation. 

He  had  more  trouble  with  his  Cabinet 
than  all  other  Presidents  combined.  Instead 
of  being  loyal  to  him,  laying  aside  their 
political  ambitions  in  this  hour  of  the  Na- 
tion's greatest  trials,  they  began  quarreling 
among  themselves  and  plotting  to  succeed 
him  as  President.  Oh!  I  tell  you,  my  dear 
friends,  that  when  the  true  history  of  this 
Nation  is  written,  there  will  be  some  of  them 
who  will  appear  mighty  small  and  certainly 
unpatriotic.  Secretary  of  State  Seward  was 
sure  he  knew  more  than  the  President.  In- 
side of  ninety  days  he  got  off  his  high  horse; 
Lincoln  leaned  over  and  took  hold  of  the 
gentleman's  collar,  and  carefully  put  him  on 
behind  and  continued  to  handle  the  reins 


34  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

himself.  Seward  accepted  the  situation  and 
thereafter  made  a  good  Secretary  of  State. 
He  had  political  sense  enough  to  know  that 
if  Lincoln's  administration  were  a  success, 
he  must  be  his  own  successor,  and  if  it  failed 
no  one  of  his  party  could  be  elected. 

Then  he  had  trouble  with  Chase,  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury,  who  had  the  Presi- 
dential microbe  working  in  his  head.  A  very 
bad  case  of  it  and  he  never  got  over  it,  even 
after  he  got  to  be  Chief  Justice.  He  spent 
his  days  and  nights  studying  how  he  could 
beat  Lincoln  and  be  President  himself.  But 
he  was  so  good  a  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
that  Lincoln  was  broad  enough  and  great 
enough  to  overlook  his  Presidential  fever 
and  kept  him  at  his  post.  Nearly  all  of  them 
were  making  him  trouble  instead  of  helping 
him;  some  one  said  to  him,  "Why  don't  you 
send  all  those  fellows  home?"  "What,"  said 
Lincoln,  "Send  Seward  back  to  New  York, 
Chase  to  Ohio,  Cameron  to  Pennsylvania, 
and  Montgomery  Blair  to  Maryland !  Why 
I  can  watch  them  a  great  deal  easier  around 
this  Cabinet  table  than  I  could  if  they  were 
at  home."  He  was  not  only  a  statesman, 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  35 

\ 

but  a  philosopher  and  diplomat.  He  was  a 
/man  of  great  tact,  which  is  the  gentle  art  of 
doing  things  the  best  way. 

Matters  got  so  bad  in  the  war  department 
that  he  had  to  get  rid  of  Secretary  Cameron. 
But  he  did  not  send  him  back  to  Pennsyl- 
vania. He  sent  him  as  Envoy  Extraordi- 
nary and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  Rus- 
sia. Then  he  appointed  Edwin  M.  Stanton, 
the  greatest  Secretary  of  War  this  Nation 
ever  had.  A  man  of  iron,  with  nerves  of 
steel,  and  there  he  firmly  held  the  power  of 
Secretary  of  War  with  Lincoln's  "guiding 
hand  to  save  the  Nation.  But  he  was  the 
trial  of  Lincoln's  life.  Oh!  the  patience  re- 
quired to  bear  with  him.  He  was  the  Mars 
of  this  world — Lincoln  was  the  Venus  of 
earth.  One  day  he  sent  an  order  to  Stanton 
to  pardon  some  one,  and  Stanton  tore  it  up 
and  threw  it  in  the  waste  basket.  The  gen- 
tleman returned  and  told  Lincoln  that  Stan- 
ton  said  he  was  a  fool.  Lincoln  replied,  "If 
Stanton  said  so  it  must  be  so."  A  few  hours 
later  he  repeated  the  order  and  it  was 
obeyed.  When  Lincoln  was  a  boy  he  used 
to  plow  and  when  he  came  to  a  nice  apple 


36  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

tree,  which  some  day  would  bear  fruit,  he 
plowed  around  it,  and  that  is  the  way  he  did 
with  Stanton,  "plowed  around  him,"  because 
he  knew  he  was  a  great  Secretary  of  War. 
Oh,  the  patience  he  had.  The  patience  to 
stand  him  those  three  long  years  of  war.  No 
one  could  ever  have  stood  Stanton  three 
years  who  had  not  been  taught  patience  by 
living  with  Mrs.  Lincoln  twenty  years.  So 
•J  you  see  there  is  a  compensation  for  all  trials. 
These  things  all  entered  into  the  life  of  the 
man  who  had  this  mighty  task  on  his  hands 
of  saving  this  Nation.  But  it  just  seems  as 
though  nothing  ever  came  to  him  to  make 
life  easy  and  happy  as  it  does  to  ordinary 
mortals. 

Then  he  had  trouble  with  his  generals, 
especially  McClellan  and  Fremont.  They 
had  not  their  shoulder  straps  on  twenty-four 
hours  before  they  began  making  arrange- 
ments to  be  President  next  time.  Others 
followed  in  order.  Give  them  a  little  promo- 
tion and  they  got  "the  big  head."  Lilliputian 
politicians,  about  4  by  4  inches  square,  and 
they  could  never  see  anything  bigger  than 
themselves. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  37 

Be  it  said  to  the  everlasting  credit  of  the 
Federal  army  that  Lincoln  finally  found 
three  generals  who  did  not  want  to  be  Presi- 
dent, who  knew  how  and  were  willing  to 
fight,  and  who  were  never  jealous  of  each 
other  or  any  one  else.  Place  high  on  the  roll 
of  true  patriotism  the  names  of  Generals 
Grant,  Sherman  and  Sheridan. 

And  he  had  trouble  with  Congress  of 
course.  Oh!  if  we  could  only  carry  on  war 
without  a  Congress,  with  its  resolutions  and 
speeches.  A  debating  society  never  won  a 
battle.  When  the  cabinet  was  all  right,  the 
"big  head"  generals  dismissed,  Congress  not 
in  session,  and  Mrs.  Lincoln  asleep,  then 
Horace  Greeley  always  said  some  fool  thing 
in  the  New  York  Tribune.  The  war  went  on 
and  he  arose  above  these  things  and  carried 
burdens  that  others  should  have  borne  with 
the  one  great  thought  of  saving  the  Nation. 

We  now  come  to  the  emancipation  proc- 
lamation. I  presume  if  I  were  to  ask  an  or- 
dinary American  audience  what  was  the 
greatest  act  of  Lincoln's  life,  the  reply  would 
be,  "Signing  the  emancipation  proclama- 
tion." "With  one  great  stroke  ofhis  pen  lie 


38  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

I  struck  the  shackles  from  four  million  slaves." 
II  I  actually  read  that  the  .other  day  in  one  of 
our  great  daily  papers.  Why  do  people  say 
that?  There  is  not  a  word  of  truth  in  it — it 
did  not  free  a  single  slave — either  the  pre- 
liminary proclamation  of  Sept.  22,  1862,  or 
the  final  one  of  January  1,  1863.  You  must 
remember  that  the  proclamation  only  pro- 
vided that  the  slaves  within  the  Confederate 
lines  should  be  free,  leaving  the  ones  within 
the  Federal  lines  to  remain  in  slavery.  All 
the  slaves  in  Missouri,  Maryland,  Kentucky, 
Delaware,  West  Virginia,  Tennessee,  and, 
parts  of  Virginia  and  Louisiana  were  not 
included  in  the  proclamation.  It  tried  to 
free  only  the  slaves  over  which  the  Nation 
then  had  no  control,  and  left  in  slavery  all 
those  over  which  it  had  physical  control.1 

What  happened?  Enlistments  fell  off,  de- 
sertions increased  in  the  army;  officers  re- 
signed their  commissions;  it  divided  the 
North  and  solidified  the  South ;  stocks  went 
down,  and  when  the  elections  came  in  the 
fall  of  1862  the  administration  lost  thirty- 

'The  Fugitive  Slave  law  was  not  repealed  until  June  28, 
1864.  The  13th  Amendment  which  took  effect  Dec.  18,  1865, 
freed  the  slaves. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  39 

eight  seats  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
and  lost  heavily  in  the  states  of  New  York, 
New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio  and  In- 
diana. Lincoln  lost  his  own  State,  which 
sent  to  the  Senate  a  man  who  fought  his  ad- 
ministration; and  the  legislature  contained 
so  many  rebels  that  Governor  Yates  pro- 
rogued them  and  sent  them  home, — the  only 
like  instance  in  American  history.  The  ef- 
fect of  the  proclamation  on  foreign  countries 
fell  far  short  of  the  expectations  of  the  ad- 
ministration. Are  we  not  far  enough  from 
the  war  now  to  tell  the  truth  about  this  mat- 
ter? I  think  it  was  the  greatest  mistake  of 
his  administration.  It  was  at  least  of  doubt- 
ful utility.1 

That  was  not  his  greatest  act.  What  then 
was  his  greatest  act?  When  the  flag  was 
shot  down  at  Fort  Sumter  he  had  to  decide 
whether  or  not  the  constitution  gave  him 
power  to  "coerce  a  sovereign  State."  Nearly 
all  the  best  constitutional  lawyers  of  the 
country  decided  that  he  had  no  such  power. 
Lincoln  again  arose  to  the  greatness  of  the 
occasion  and  decided  that  this  Nation  had  in- 

1See  Appendix. 


40  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

herent  power  to  save  its  own  life.  No  greater 
or  better  interpretation  of  the  Constitution 
was  ever  made  by  Chief  Justice  Marshall. 
The  decision  was  equivalent  to  an  amend- 
ment to  the  Constitution.  No  one  disputes 
its  correctness  now.  It  took  a  Lincoln  to  see 
it  then.  To  decide  that  he  had  such  power 
meant  that  we  were  a  "Nation  of  people," 
and  not  a  "Union  of  States."  We  would  have 
been  destroyed  as  a  Nation  in  an  hour  had 
he  decided  otherwise.  He  then  issued  his 
call  for  75,000  men  and  they  came.  When 
others  were  called  they  came,  and  our  Na- 
tional unity  was  preserved. 

In  my  opinion  this  was  the  greatest  act 
of  his  life. 

Signing  the  emancipation  proclamation 
sinks  into  insignificance  compared  to  it. 

If  we  could  destroy  the  larger  part  of  all 
that  has  ever  been  said  about  Lincoln  and 
start  with  one  good,  true  life  of  him,  I  should 
have  hopes  that  some  time  in  the  near  future 
we  might  begin  to  comprehend  this  most  in- 
comprehensible man. 

He  was  invited  to  make  a  few  dedicatory 
remarks  on  the  occasion  of  the  dedication  of 


LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  41 

a  portion  of  the  battlefield  of  Gettysburg  as 
National  Cemetery  November  19,  1863. 
Edward  Everett  was  to  deliver  the  main  ad- 
dress, which  took  over  two  hours,  and  was 
a  magnificent  effort.  There  were  100,000 
people  present. 

It  was  a  great  occasion  and  Lincoln  did 

not  fail  to  be  as  great  as  the  occasion.      After 

ffflr.  Everett's  oration,  he  stepped  forward 

/( and  read  from  a  sheet  of  paper  ten  sentences, 

(^  1 268  words.  The  Gettysburg  address.1  The 
only  bit  of  American  literature  ever  taught 
in  an  English  University.  The  battle  of  Get- 
tysburg was  the  decisive  battle  of  the  Civil 
War,  and  one  of  the  greatest  in  all  history. 
Lincoln  wanted  to  ask  his  people  not  to  let 

TO  1  the  men  who  fell  there  "die  in  vain."  If  he 
'made  a  long  speech  they  would  not  read  it, 
(so  he  made  it  short  enough  for  them  to  com- 
mit to  memory.  Those  words  so  touched 
the  Northern  heart  and  quickened  it  to  ac- 
tion, for  the  remaining  conflict,  that  their 
importance  became  second  only  to  the  bat- 
tle of  Gettysburg  itself.  Everett's  speech 
did  not  live  an  hour.  Lincoln's  will  live  for- 

1See  Appendix. 


42  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

ever.    Of  this  speech  Senator  Charles  Sum- 
ner  said:     "Since  Simonides  wrote  the  epi- 
taph  of  those  who  died   at   Thermopylae, 
{   nothing  equal  has  ever  been  breathed  over 
V  the  fallen  dead." 

Incomprehensible  Lincoln!  No  one  ever 
called  him  a  scholar.  He  was  never  noted 
for  being  a  man  of  great  learning.  Up  to 
this  time  no  University  had  proposed  to  con- 
fer upon  him  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws.1 
Yet  we  find  him  writing  such  masterpieces 
of  English  as  the  Gettysburg  address,  the 
two  Inaugural  addresses,2  the  Cooper  Insti- 
tute speech  and  many  others.  His  letters  are 
Jaiuch  masterpieces  of  logic,  reason  and  good 
/.English  that  they  are  not  second  to  Bacon's 
[•(Essays.  Some  of  his  sentences  are  like  a 
demonstration  in  Euclid.  Here  is  one.  After 
the  fall  of  Vicksburg  and  the  North  had 
gained  control  of  the  Mississippi  river,  he 
summed  up  the  situation  in  one  sentence  of 
ten  words  thus:  "The  Father  of  Waters 


'In  December,  1864,  the  degree  of  LL.D.  was  conferred 
upon  President  Lincoln  in  absentia  by  the  Trustees  of  the 
College  of  New  Jersey,  now  Princeton  University.  His  letter 
of  acceptance  was  dated  Washington,  Dec.  27,  1864.  He 
never  got  to  Princeton  in  person  to  receive  the  degree 
formally. 

'See  appendix. 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  43 

again   goes   unvexed   to   the   Sea."    In   all 
of  Shakespeare  you  can  hardly  find  a  more 
Comprehensive  sentence. 

luvT  I  think  Lincoln  wrote  the  best  English  of 
any  man  since  Shakespeare,  and  it  is  as  hard 
for  us  to  conceive  that  the  Lincoln  of  New 
Salem  was  the  Lincoln  of  Gettysburg,  as  it 
is  to  believe  that  the  Shakespeare  of  Strat- 
ford is  the  Shakespeare  of  the  plays. 

In  the  presidential  campaign  of  1864, 
when  Lincoln  stood  for  re-election,  there 
took  place  the  bitterest  campaign  in  our  his- 
tory. He  had  three  formidable  foes  to  com- 
bat, the  secessionist  in  the  field  in  the  South, 
the  Democratic  party  of  the  North,  and 
worse  than  both  the  former  were  the  trait- 
ors, brainy,  ambitious,  dishonest,  unpatriotic 
politicians  who  wanted  office  and  promotion 
worse  than  they  wanted  to  save  the  Nation, 
who  were  prominent  members  of  his  own 
party.  They  not  only  fought  him  until  he 
was  re-nominated,  but  demanded  his  decli- 
nation thereafter. 

He  was  so  villified  and  maligned  by  men 
who  ought  to  have  been  his  supporters,  that 
for  him  personally  it  took  all  the  honor  and 
pleasure  out  of  his  re-election. 


44  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

Nothing  could  come  to  him  as  to  other 
men  to  give  him  pleasure  and  happiness.  It 
seems  as  though  that  was  not  to  be.    During 
_/if  all  no  bitter  word  of  resentment  was  ever 
spoken  by  him. 

Lincoln  will  live  in-  the  love  and  admira- 
tion of  the  people  of  this  Nation  when  his 
maligners  shall  have  become  the  unremem- 
bered  mold  of  mediocrity  and  malice, — the 
forgotten  dust  of  defeat. 
A  Let  us  mark  the  contrast  between  the  lives 
of  our  two  greatest  Americans. 

Washington  was  born  of  a  race  of  cava- 
liers, and  was  the  greatest  of  them  all. 

Lincoln  was  born  a  plebeian  and  was  the 
poorest  of  ten  thousand. 

Washington's  boyhood  days  were  filled 
with  joy  and  prosperity,  and  at  nineteen  he 
was  one  of  the  Adjutants-General  of  Vir- 
ginia, with  the  rank  of  Major. 

Lincoln's  childhood  was  filled  with  sor- 
row, and  at  twenty-one,  uneducated,  un- 
known, and  not  cared  for,  he  was  driving 
two  yoke  of  oxen  hitched  to  an  emigrant 
wagon,  going  from  Indiana  to  Illinois. 

Washington    enjoyed    more    than    forty 


LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  45 

years  of  domestic  felicity,  never  excelled  in 
the  lives  of  great  men. 

Lincoln's  married  life  of  twenty-two  years 
we  will  not  dwell  upon. 

Washington  was  a  success  as  a  planter, 
financier,  legislator,  general,  statesman  and 
President.  All  things  transpired  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  give  him  honor  and  pleasure 
out  of  public  service. 

Lincoln's  only  great  success  came  to  him 
through  the  Presidency.  The  attaining  and 
administration  of  the  office  gave  him  little 
personal  happiness. 

Washington,  after  a  career  of  unprece- 
dented success  in  war  and  peace  retired  to 
his  beaut-iful  Mt.  Vernon  home  .with1  his 
kindred  and  friends  around  him.  No  great 
sorrow  had  ever  entered  his  life.  In  ripe  old 
age,  in  that  peaceful  home,  with  his  beloved 
Martha  by  his  side  he  laid  down  to  rest — 
"and  he  was  not." 

Lincoln,  who  had  always  worn  "sorrow's 
crown  of  sorrow"  came  to  his  death  while 
yet  bearing  the  burden,  in  a  public  place 
with  the  enactment  of  the  greatest  tragedy 
since  the  crucifixion.1 


'President  Lincoln  was  assassinated  by  John  Wilkes  Booth 


46  LINCOLN:    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

In  some  respects  they  were  alike.  They 
/  were  both  great  men.  No  opportunity  was 
\  ever  too  great  for  them  to  grasp. 

Each  stood  for  a  great  moral  and  political 
reform. 

No  man  lives  in  history  and  the  hearts  of 
the  people  who  does  not  stand  for  the  fore- 
most moral  reform  of  his  day. 

We  Americans  have  a  right  to  feel  a  little 
proud  of  the  fact  that  this  marvelous  young 
Republic  produced  the  greatest  man  in  the 
World's  history  of  the  18th  century  in  the 
person  of  George  Washington;  and  the 
greatest  of  the  19th  in  the  person  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln. 

Our  limit  is  not  yet.  We  shall  furnish 
the  greatest  man  of  the  20th  century.  We 
are  looking  for  him  now.  He  will  be  the 
Statesman  who  is  big  enough  to  rise  to  the 
greatness  of  opportunity  and  lead  this  Na- 
tion to  the  Prohibition  of  the  liquor  traffic. 
His  name  in  history  will  be  written  by  the 
side  of  Washington  and  Lincoln. 

at  Ford's  Theater,  Washington,  D.  C,  on  the  evening  of  April 
14,  1865,  a  few  minutes  past  10  o'clock.  He  was  carried  to  a 
house  across  the  street,  remaining  unconscious  until  he  died 
at  7:22  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  15th. 

He  was  buried  at  Oak  Ridge  Cemetery,  Springfield,  111., 
May  4. 


LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW  47 

In  no  respect  did  the  life  of  Lincoln  more 
resemble  that  of  our  Saviour  than  in  his  last 
•  days. 

Passion  Week  means  human  triumphs — 
death  in  agony.  Palm  Sunday  is  the  Sun- 
day of  victory.  Good  Friday,  the  day  of 
crucifixion  and  assassination. 

Earthly  success  and  triumph  came  to  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  but  once,  and  that  was 
marked  by  his  triumphal  entry  into  Jerusa- 
lem late  in  the  afternoon  of  Sunday,  April 
|  2,  A.  D.  30.  As  the  multitude  escorted  Him 
!  ,'into  the  Holy  City,  they  strewed  palms  in 
his  pathway,  and  it  has  been  called  Palm 
Sunday  to  this  day. 

This  earthly  triumph  of  "Je&us  Christ, 
the  Man  of  many  Sorrows,"  took  different 
forms  from  day  to  day  until  April  7,  Good 
Friday,  when  his  enemies  again  took  pos- 
session of  the  City,  and  He  died  on  the 
Cross. 

Abraham  Lincoln's  life  would  have  been 
a  failure  if  secession  had  triumphed  and  the 
states  been  dissevered. 

Success  came  to  him  but  once  also,  and 
was  marked  by  the  victory  of  the  Federal 
Army  at  A.ppomattox  when  General  Le'e 


48  LINCOLN :    THE  MAN  OF  SORROW 

surrendered  to  General  Grant,  on  April  9, 
A.  D.  1865,  which  was  also  Palm  Sunday. 
\  Late  in  the  afternoon  the  news  reached 
Washington.  The  war  was  over.  The 
burden  was  lifted.  The  Nation  was  not  dis- 
severed, and  President  Lincoln's  name  and 
fame  were  secure  forever.  This  triumph  of 
"Lincoln,  the  Man  of  Sorrow"  took  differ- 
;ent  forms  from  day  to  day,  and  made  up  a 
large  part  of  the  happiness  of  a  life  time, 
until  April  14,  which  was  also  Good  Friday, 
when,  for  the  first  time  in  history  the  "Com- 
mander-in-Chief '  of  a  victorious  army  was 
pierced  by  a  bullet,  such  as  had  caused  the 
death  of  so  many  thousands  of  his  brave 
soldiers  on  the  field  of  battle. 

He  could  not  have  wished  to  have  died  at 
the  hands  of  an  assassin  in  any  other  man- 
ner. 

Triumphant  success  came  into  their 
earthly  lives  but  once,  and  that  was  on  Palm 
Sunday.  Five  days  thereafter  and  on  Good 
Friday,  Jesus  was  crucified. 

Five  days  therafter  and  on  Good  Friday, 
Lincoln  was  assassinated,  and  the  parallel 
is  complete. 


Appendix. 


AN  ADDRESS 

Delivered  before  the  Springfield  Washington  Temperance  Society, 

on  the  22nd  of  February,  1842, 

By  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  Esq., 

And  published  by  direction  of  the  Society. 

Although  the  Temperance  cause  has  been 
in  progress  for  near  twenty  years,  it  is  ap- 
parent to  all,  that  it  is  just  now  being 
crowned  with  a  degree  of  success,  hitherto 
unparalleled. 

The  list  of  its  friends  is  daily  swelled  by 
the  additions  of  fifties,  of  hundreds,  and  of 
thousands.  The  cause  itself  seems  suddenly 
transformed  from  a  cold,  abstract  theory,  to 
a  living,  breathing,  active  and  powerful 
chieftain,  going  forth  "conquering  and  to 
conquer."  The  citadels  of  his  great  adver- 
sary are  daily  being  stormed  and  disman- 
tled; his  temples  and  his  altars,  where  the 
rites  of  his  idolatrous  worship  have  long 
been  performed,  and  where  human  sacri- 
fices have  long  been  wont  to  be  made,  are 
daily  desecrated  and  deserted.  The  trump 


50  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

of  the  conquerer's  fame  is  sounding  from 
hill  to  hill,  from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  land  to 
land,  and  calling  millions  to  his  standard  at 
a  blast. 

For  this  new  and  splendid  success,  we 
heartily  rejoice.  That  that  success  is  so 
much  greater  now,  than  heretofore,  is 
doubtless  owing  to  rational  causes;  and  if 
we  would  have  it  continue,  we  shall  do  well 
to  inquire  what  those  causes  are.  The  war- 
fare heretofore  waged  against  the  demon 
Intemperance,  has,  somehow  or  other,  been 
erroneous.  Either  the  champions  engaged, 
or  the  tactics  they  adopted,  have  not  been 
the  most  proper.  These  champions  for  the 
most  part,  have  been  Preachers,  Lawyers, 
and  hired  agents.  Between  these  and  the 
mass  of  mankind,  there  is  a  want  of  ap- 
pro achability ,  if  the  term  be  admissible, 
partially  at  least,  fatal  to  their  success.  They 
are  supposed  to  have  no  sympathy  of  feeling 
or  interest,  with  those  very  persons  whom 
it  is  their  object  to  convince  and  persuade. 

And  again,  it  is  so  easy  and  so  common 
to  ascribe  motives  to  men  of  these  classes 
other  than  those  they  profess  to  act  upon. 
The  preacher,  it  is  said,  advocates  temper- 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  51 

ance  because  he  is  a  fanatic,  and  desires  a 
union  of  the  Church  and  State;  the  lawyer, 
from  his  pride  and  vanity  of  hearing  himself 
speak;  and  the  hired  agent  for  his  salary. 
But  when  one,  who  has  long  been  known  as 
a  victim  of  intemperance,  bursts  the  fetters 
that  have  bound  him,  and  appears  before  his 
neighbors  "clothed  and  in  his  right  mind," 
a  redeemed  specimen  of  long  lost  humanity, 
and  stands  up  with  tears  of  joy  trembling  in 
eyes,  to  tell  of  the  miseries  once  endured, 
now  to  be  endured  no  more  forever;  of  his 
once  naked  and  starving  children,  now  clad 
and  fed  comfortably ;  of  a  wife,  long  weighed 
down  with  woe,  weeping,  and  a  broken 
heart,  now  restored  to  health,  happiness, 
and  a  renewed  affection;  and  how  easily  it  is 
all  done,  once  it  is  resolved  to  be  done;  how- 
ever simple  his  language,  there  is  a  logic 
and  an  eloquence  in  it  that  few  with  human 


feelings,  can  resist.  They  cannot  say  that  he 
desires  a  union  of  church  and  state,  for  he  is 
not  a  church  member;  they  cannot  say  lie 
is  vain  of  hearing  himself  speak,  for  his 
whole  demeanor  shows  he  would  gladly 
avoid  speaking  at  all;  they  cannot  say  he 


52  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

speaks  for  pay,  for  he  receives  none,  and 
asks  for  none.  Nor  can  his  sincerity  in  any 
way  be  doubted;  or  his  sympathy  for  those 
he  would  persuade  to  imitate  his  example, 
be  denied. 

In  my  judgment,  it  is  to  the  battles  of  this 
new  class  of  champions  that  our  late  success 
is  greatly,  perhaps  chiefly,  owing.  But,  had 
the  old-school  champions  themselves  been 
of  the  most  wise  selecting,  was  their  system 
of  tactics,  the  most  judicious?  It  seems  to 
me,  it  was  not.  Too  much  denunciation 
against  dram-sellers  and  dram-drinkers  was 
indulged  in.  This,  I  think,  was  both  impoli- 
tic and  unjust.  It  was  impolitic,  because  it 
is  not  much  in  the  nature  of  man  to  be  driven 
to  anything;  still  less  to  be  driven  about 
that  which  is  exclusively  his  own  business; 
and  least  of  all,  where  such  driving  is  to  be 
submitted  to,  at  the  expense  of  pecuniary 
interest,  or  burning  appetite.  When  the 
dram-seller  and  drinker,  were  incessantly 
told,  not  in  the  accents  of  entreaty  and  per- 
suasion, diffidently  addressed  by  erring  man 
to  an  erring  brother;  but  in  the  thundering 
tones  of  anathema  and  denunciation,  with 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  53 

which  the  lordly  judge  often  groups  to- 
gether all  the  crimes  of  the  felon's  life,  and 
thrusts  them  in  his  face  just  ere  he  passes 
sentence  of  death  upon  him,  that  they  were 
the  authors  of  all  the  vice  and  misery  and 
crime  in  the  land;  that  they  were  the  manu- 
facturers and  material  of  all  the  thieves  and 
robbers  and  murderers  that  infest  the  earth; 
that  their  houses  were  the  workshops  of  the 
devil;  and  that  their  persons  should  be 
shunned  by  all  the  good  and  virtuous  as 
moral  pestilences. — I  say,  when  they  were 
told  all  this  ,and  in  this  way,  it  is  not  won- 
derful that  they  were  slow,  very  slow,  to 
acknowledge  the  truth  of  such  denuncia- 
tions, and  to  join  the  ranks  of  their  denounc- 
ers, in  a  hue  and  cry  against  themselves. 
iTo  have  expected  them  to  do  otherwise 
an  they  did — to  have  expected  them  not 
to  meet  denunciation  with  denunciation, 
crimination  with  crimination,  and  anathema 
with  anathema — was  to  expect  a  reversal  of 
human  nature,  which  is  God's  decree  and. 
can  never  be  reversed.  When  the  conduct  of 
men  is  designed  to  be  influenced,  persuasion, 
kind,  unassuming  persuasion,  should  ever  be 


54  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

adopted.     It  is  an  old  and  a  true  maxim, 
/'"that  a  drop  of  honey  catches  more  flies  than 
]    a  gallon  of  gall." — So  with  men.     If  you 
"  would  win  a  man  to  your  cause,  first   con- 
vince him  that  you  are  his  sincere  friend. 
Therein  is  a  drop  of  honey  that  catches  his 
heart,  which,  say  what  he  will,  is  the  great 
high  road  to  his  reason,  and  which,  when 
once  gained,  you  will  find  but  little  trouble 
in  convincing  his  judgment  of  the  justice  of 
your  cause,  if  indeed  that  cause  really  be  a 
just  one.    On  the  contrary,  assume  to  dictate 
to  his  judgment,  or  to  command  his  action, 
or  to  mark  him  as  one  to  be  shunned  and  de- 
spised, and  he  will  retreat  within  himself, 
close  all  the  avenues  to  his  head  and  his 
heart ;  and  though  your  cause  be  naked  truth 
itself,    transformed    to   the    heaviest   lance, 
harder  than  steel,  and  sharper  than  steel  can 
be  made,  and  though  you  throw  it  with  more 
than    Herculean    force    and    precision,    you 
shall  be  no  more  able  to  pierce  him  than  to 
I  penetrate  the  hard  shell  of  a  tortoise  with  a 
1  rye  straw. 

Such  is  man,  and  so  musthe  be  understood 
by  those  who  lead  him,  even  to  his  own  best 
interest. 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  55 

On  this  point,  the  Washingtonians  greatly 
excel  the  temperance  advocates  of  former 
times.  Those  whom  they  desire  to  convince 
and  persuade,  are  their  old  friends  and  com- 
panions. They  know  they  are  not  demons, 
nor  even  the  worst  of  men.  They  know  that 
generally  they  are  kind,  generous  and  char- 
itable, even  beyond  then  example  of  their 
more  staid  and  sober  neighbors.  They  are 
practical  philanthropists;  and  they  glow 
with  a  generous  and  brotherly  zeal,  that 
mere  theorizers  are  incapable  of  feeling.  Be- 
nevolence and  charity  possess  their  hearts 
entirely;  and  out  of  the  abundance  of  their 
hearts,  their  tongues  give  utterance,  "Love 
through  all  their  actions  run,  and  all  their 
words  are  mild."  In  this  spirit  they  speak 
and  act,  and  in  the  same,  they  are  heard  and 
regarded.  And  when  such  is  the  temper  of 
the  advocate,  and  such  of  the  audience,  no 
good  cause  can  be  unsuccessful.  But  I  have 
said  that  denunciations  against  dram-sellers 
and  dram-drinkers  are  unjust  as  well  as  im- 
politic. Let  us  see. 

I  have  not  enquired  at  what  period  of 
time  the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors  com- 


56  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

menced,  nor  is  it  important  to  know.  It  is 
sufficient  that  to  all  of  us  who  now  inhabit 
the  world,  the  practice  of  drinking  them,  is 
just  as  old  as  the  world  itself, — that  is,  we 
have  seen  the  one,  just  as  long  as  we  have 
seen  the  other.  When  all  such  of  us  as,  have 
now  reached  the  years  of  maturity,  first 
opened  our  eyes  upon  the  stage  of  existence, 
we  found  intoxicating  liquor,  recognized  by 
everybody,  used  by  everybody,  and  repu- 
diated by  nobody.  It  commonly  entered  into 
the  first  draught  of  the  infant,  and  the  last 
draught  of  the  dying  man.  From  the  side- 
board of  the  parson  down  to  the  ragged 
pocket  of  the  houseless  loafer,  it  was  con- 
stantly found.  Physicians  prescribed  it  in 
this,  that,  and  the  other  disease.  Govern- 
ment provided  it  for  its  soldiers  and  sailors ; 
and  to  have  a  rolling  or  raising,  a  husking 
or  hoe-down  anywhere  without  it.  was  pos- 
itively unsufferable. 

So,  too,  it  was  everywhere  a  respectable 
article  of  manufacture  and  of  merchandise. 
The  making  of  it  was  regarded  as  an  hon- 
orable livelihood,  and  he  who  could  make 
most  was  the  most  enterprising  and  respect- 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  57 

able.  Large  and  small  manufactories  of  it 
were  everywhere  erected,  in  which  all  the 
earthly  goods  of  their  owners  were  invested. 
Wagons  drew  it  from  town  to  town;  boats 
bore  it  from  clime  to  clime,  and  the  winds 
wafted  it  from  nation  to  nation;  and  mer- 
chants bought  and  sold  it,  by  wholesale  and 
by  retail,  with  precisely  the  same  feelings, 
on  the  part  of  the  seller,  buyer,  and  by- 
stander, as  are  felt  at  the  selling  and  buying 
of  flour,  beef,  bacon,  or  any  other  of  the  real 
necessaries  of  life.  Universal  public  opin- 
ion not  only  tolerated,  but  recognized  and 
adopted  its  use. 

It  is  true  that  even  then  it  was  known  and 
acknowledged  that  many  were  greatly  in- 
jured by  it;  but  none  seemed  to  think  the 
injury  arose  from  the  use  of  a  bad  thing, 
but  from  the  abuse  of  a  very  good  thing.  The 
victims  to  it  were  pitied,  and  compassionated 
just  as  now  are  the  heirs  of  consumption,  and 
other  hereditary  diseases.  Their  failing  was 
treated  as  a  misfortune,  and  not  as  a  crime, 
or  even  as  a  disgrace. 

If,  then,  what  I  have  been  saying  be  true, 
is  it  wonderful,  that  some  should  think  and 


58  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

act  now,  as  all  thought  and  acted  twenty 
years  ago?  And  is  it  just  to  assail,  condemn, 
or  despise  them  for  doing  so?  The  universal 
sense  of  mankind,  on  any  subject,  is  an  argu- 
ment, or  at  least  an  influence  not  easily  over- 
come. The  success  of  the  argument  in  favor 
of  the  existence  of  an  overruling  Providence, 
mainly  depends  upon  that  sense;  and  men 
ought  not,  in  justice,  to  be  denounced  for 
yielding  to  it,  in  any  case,  or  for  giving  it  up 
slowly,  especially,  where  they  are  backed  by 
interest,  fixed  habits,  or  burning  appetites. 

Another  error,  as  it  seems  to  me,  into 
which  the  old  reformers  fell  was  the  position 
that  all  habitual  drunkards  were  utterly  in- 
corrigible, and  therefore,  must  be  turned 
adrift,  and  damned  without  remedy,  in  order 
that  the  grace  of  temperance  might  abound, 
to  the  temperate  then,  and  to  all  mankind 
some  hundred  years  thereafter.  There  is 
in  this  something  so  repugnant  to  humanity, 
so  uncharitable,  so  cold  blooded  and  feeling- 
less,  that  it  never  did,  nor  ever  can  enlist 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  popular  cause.  We  could 
not  love  the  man  who  taught  it — we  could 
not  hear  him  with  patience.  The  heart  could 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  59 

not  throw  open  its  portals  to  it.  The  gen- 
erous man  could  not  adopt  it.  It  could  not 
mix  with  his  blood.  It  looked  so  fiendishly 
selfish,  so  like  throwing  fathers  and  brothers 
overboard,  to  lighten  the  boat  for  our  se- 
curity— that  the  noble  minded  shrank  from 
the  manifest  meanness  of  the  thing.  And  be- 
sides this,  the  benefits  of  a  reformation  to  be 
effected  by  such  a  system  were  too  remote 
in  point  of  time,  to  warmly  engage  many  in 
its  behalf.  Few  can  be  induced  to  labor  ex- 
clusively for  posterity;  and  none  will  do  it 
enthusiastically.  Posterity  has  done  nothing 
for  us;  and  theorize  on  it  as  we  may,  prac- 
tically we  shall  do  very  little  for  it,  unless  we 
are  made  to  think  we  are,  at  the  same  time, 
doing  something  for  ourselves.  What  an 
ignorance  of  human  nature  does  it  exhibit, 
to  ask  or  expect  a  whole  community  to  rise 
up  and  labor  for  the  temporal  happiness  of 
others  after  themselves  shall  be  consigned  to 
the  dust,  a  majority  of  which  community 
take  no  pains  whatever  to  secure  their  own 
eternal  welfare,  at  a  no  greater  distant  day? 
Great  distance,  in  either  time  or  space,  has 
wonderful  power  to  lull  and  render  quiescent 


60  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

the  human  mind.  Pleasures  to  be  enjoyed, 
or  pains  to  be  endured,  after  we  shall  be  dead 
and  gone,  are  but  little  regarded,  even  in  our 
own  cases,  and  much  less  in  the  cases  of 
others. 

Still,  in  addition  to  this,  there  is  something 
so  ludicrous  in  promises  of  good,  or  threats 
of  evil,  a  great  way  off,  as  to  render  the 
whole  subject  with  which  they  are  connected, 
easily  turned  into  ridicule.  "Better  lay  down 
that  spade  you're  stealing,  Paddy — if  you 
don't  you'll  pay  for  it  at  the  day  of  judg- 
ment." "Be  the  powers,  if  ye'll  credit  me  so 
long  I'll  take  another  jist." 

By  the  Washingtonians,  this  system  of 
consigning  the  habitual  drunkard  to  hope- 
less ruin  is  repudiated.  They  adopt  a  more 
enlarged  philanthropy.  They  go  for  present 
as  well  as  for  future  good.  They  labor  for 
all  now  living  as  well  as  hereafter  to  live. 
They  teach  hope  to  all — despair  to  none.  As 
applying  to  their  cause,  they  deny  the  doc- 
trine of  unpardonable  sin.  As  in  Christianity 
it  is  taught,  so  in  this  they  teach,  that 

"While  the  lamp  holds  out  to  burn 
The  vilest  sinner  may  return." 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  61 

And,  what  is  matter  of  the  most  profound 
gratulation,  they,  by  experiment  upon  ex- 
periment, and  example  upon  example,  prove 
the  maxim  to  be  no  less  true  in  the  one  case 
than  in  the  other.  On  every  hand  we  behold 
those  who,  but  yesterday,  were  the  chief  of 
sinners,  now  the  chief  apostles  of  the  cause. 
Drunken  devils  are  cast  out  by  ones,  by 
sevens,  and  by  legions;  and  their  unfortunate 
victims,  like  the  poor  possessed,  who  was  re- 
deemed from  his  long  and  lonely  wanderings 
in  the  tombs,  are  publishing  to  the  ends  of 
the  earth,  how  great  things  have  been  done 
for  them. 

To  these  new  champions,  and  this  new 
system  of  tactics,  our  late  success  is  mainly 
owing;  and  to  them  we  must  chiefly  look  for 
the  final  consummation.  The  ball  is  now  roll- 
ing gloriously  on,  and  none  are  so  able  as 
they  to  increase  its  speed,  and  its  bulk, — to 
add  to  its  momentum,  and  its  magnitude. 
Even  though  unlearned  in  letters,  for  this 
task,  none  others  are  so  well  educated.  To 
fit  them  for  this  work,  they  have  been  taught 
in  the  true  school.  They  have  been  in  that 
gulf  from  which  they  would  teach  others  the 
means  of  escape.  They  have  passed  that 


62  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

prison  wall,  which  others  have  long  declared 
impassable;  and  who  that  has  not,  shall 
dare  to  weigh  opinions  with  them  as  to  the 
mode  of  passing. 

But  if  it  be  true,  as  I  have  insisted,  that 
those  who  have  suffered  by  intemperance 
personally,  and  have  reformed  are  the  most 
powerful  and  efficient  instruments  to  push 
the  reformation  to  ultimate  success,  it  does 
not  follow,  that  those  who  have  not  suffered, 
have  no  part  left  them  to  perform.  Whether 
or  not  the  world  would  be  vastly  benefited 
by  a  total  and  final  banishment  from  it  of  all 
intoxicating  drinks,  seems  to  me  not  now 
to  be  an  open  question.  Three-fourths  of 
mankind  confess  the  affirmative  with  their 
tongues,  and,  I  believe,  all  the  rest  acknow- 
ledge it  in  their  hearts. 

Ought  any  then,  to  refuse  their  aid  in  do- 
ing what  the  good  of  the  whole  demands? 
Shall  he,  who  cannot  do  much,  be,  for  that 
reason,  excused  if  he  do  nothing?  "But," 
says  one,  "what  good  can  I  do  by  signing 
the  pledge?  I  never  drink,  even  without 
signing."  This  question  has  already  been 
asked  and  even  answered  more  than  millions 
of  times.  Let  it  be  answered  once  more. 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  63 

For  the  man  to  suddenly,  or  in  any  other 
way,  to  break  off  from  the  use  of  drams,  who 
has  indulged  in  them  for  a  long  course  of 
years,  and  until  his  appetite  for  them  has  be- 
come ten  or  a  hundred  fold  stronger,  and 
more  craving,  than  any  natural  appetite  can 
be,  requires  a  most  powerful  moral  effort.  In 
such  an  undertaking,  he  needs  every  moral 
support  and  influence,  that  can  possibly  be 
brought  to  his  aid,  and  thrown  around  him. 
And  not  only  so,  but  every  moral  prop, 
should  be  taken  from  whatever  argument 
might  rise  in  his  mind  to  lure  him  to  his 
backsliding.  When  he  casts  his  eyes  around 
him  he  should  be  able  to  see  all  that  he  re- 
spects, all  that  he  admires,  and  all  that  he 
loves,  kindly  and  anxiously  pointing  him  on- 
ward; and  none  beckoning  him  back,  to  his 
former  miserable  "wallowing  in  the  mire." 

But  it  is  said  by  some,  that  men  will  think 
and  act  for  themselves;  that  none  will  disuse 
spirits  or  anything  else  merely  because  his 
neighbors  do;  and  that  moral  influence  is 
not  that  powerful  engine  contended  for.  Let 
us  examine  this.  Let  me  ask  the  man  who 
could  maintain  this  position  most  stiffly, 
what  compensation  he  will  accept  to  go  to 


64  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

church  some  Sunday  and  sit  during  the  ser- 
mon with  his  wife's  bonnet  upon  his  head? 
Not  a  trifle,  I'll  venture.  And  why  not? 
There  would  be  nothing  irreligious  in  it; 
nothing  immoral,  nothing  uncomfortable. 
Then  why  not?  Is  it  not  because  there  would 
be  something  egregiously  unfashionable 
in  it?  Then  it  is  the  influence  of  fashion;:  and 
what  is  the  influence  of  fashion,  but  the  in- 
fluence that  other  people's  actions  have  on 
our  own  actions  —  the  strong  inclination 
each  of  us  feels  to  do  as  we  see  all  our  neigh- 
bors do?  Nor  is  the  influence  of  fashion  con- 
fined to  any  particular  thing  or  class  of 
things.  It  is  just  as  strong  on  one  subject 
as  another.  Let  us  make  it  as  unfashionable 
to  withhold  our  names  from  the  temperance 
pledge  as  for  husbands  to  wear  their  wives 
bonnets  to  church,  and  instances  will  be  just 
as  rare  in  the  one  case  as  the  other. 

"But,"  say  some,  "we  are  no  drunkards; 
and  we  shall  not  acknowledge  ourselves  such 
by  joining  a  reformed  drunkards'  society, 
whatever  our  influence  might  be."  Surely 
no  Christian  will  adhere  to  this  objection. 
If  they  believe,  as  they  profess,  that  Omnipo- 
tence condescended  to  take  on  Himself  the 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  65 

form  of  sinful  man  and,  as  such,  to  die  an 
ignominious  death  for  their  sakes,  surely 
they  will  not  refuse  submission  to  the  in- 
finitely lesser  condescension  for  the  temporal 
and  perhaps  eternal  salvation  of  a  large,  err- 
ing, and  unfortunate  class  of  their  own  fel- 
low creatures.  Nor  is  the  condescension 
very  great. 

In  my  judgment,  such  of  us  as  have  never 
fallen  victims  have  been  spared  more  from 
the  absence  of  appetite,  than  from  any  men- 
tal or  moral  superiority  over  those  who  have. 
Indeed,  I  believe  if  we  take  habitual  drunk- 
ards as  a  class,  their  heads  and  their  hearts 
will  bear  an  advantageous  comparison  with 
those  of  any  other  class.  There  seems  ever 
to  have  been  a  proneness  in  the  brilliant  and 
warm-blooded  to  fall  into  this  vice.  (The 
demon  of  intemperance  ever  seems  to  have 
delighted  in  sucking  the  blood  of  genius  and 
of  generosity^  What  one  of  us  but  can  call 
to  mind  some  dear  relative,  more  promising 
in  youth  than  all  his  fellows,  who  has  fallen 
a  sacrifice  to  his  rapacity?  He  ever  seems 
to  have  gone  forth,  like  the  Egyptian  angel 
of  death,  commissioned  to  slay  if  not  the 
first,  the  fairest  born  of  every  family.  Shall 


66  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

he  now  be  arrested  in  his  desolating  career? 
In  that  arrest,  all  can  give  aid  that  will;  and 
who  shall  be  excused  that  can  and  will  not? 
Far  around  as  human  breath  has  ever  blown, 
he  keeps  our  fathers,  our  brothers,  our  sons, 
and  our  friends,  prostrate  in  the  chains  of 
moral  death.  To  all  the  living  everywhere, 
we  cry,  "Come  sound  the  moral  resurrection 
trump,  that  these  may  rise  and  stand  up  an 
exceeding  great  army" — "Come  from  the 
four  winds,  O  breath!  and  breathe  upon 
these  slain,  that  they  may  live." 

If  the  relative  grandeur  of  revolutions 
shall  be  estimated  by  the  great  amount  of 
human  misery  they  alleviate,  and  the  small 
amount  they  inflict,  then,  indeed,  will  this  be 
the  grandest  the  world  shall  ever  have  seen. 
Of  our  political  revolution  of  '76  we  all  are 
justly  proud.  It  has  given  us  a  degree  of 
political  freedom,  far  exceeding  that  of  any 
other  of  the  nations  of  the  earth.  In  it  the 
world  has  found  a  solution  of  the  long  moot- 
ed problem  as  to  the  capability  of  man  to 
govern  himself.  In  it  was  the  germ  which 
has  vegetated,  and  still  is  to  grow  and  ex- 
pand into  the  universal  liberty  of  mankind. 

But  with  all  these  glorious  results,  past, 


TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS  67 

present,  and  to  come,  it  has  its  evils  too. 
It  breathed  forth  famine,  swam  in  blood,  and 
rode  on  fire;  and  long, longafter, the  orphans 
cry  and  the  widows  wail  continued  to  break 
the  sad  silence  that  ensued.  These  were  the 
price,  the  inevitable  price,  paid  for  the  bless- 
ings it  bought. 

Turn  now,  to  the  temperance  revolution, 
in  it  we  shall  find  a  stronger  bondage  broken, 
a  viler  slavery  manumitted,  a  greater  tyrant 
deposed.  In  it  more  of  want  supplied,  more 
disease  healed,  more  sorrow  assuaged.  By 
it  no  orphans  starving,  no  widows  weeping. 
By  it  none  wounded  in  feeling,  none  injured 
in  interest.  Even  the  dram-maker,  and  dram- 
seller,  will  have  glided  into  other  occupa- 
tions so  gradually  as  never  to  have  felt  the 
shock  of  change,  and  will  stand  ready  to  join 
all  others  in  the  universal  song  of  gladness. 

And  what  a  noble  ally  this,  to  the  cause 
of  political  freedom.  With  such  an  aid,  its 
march  cannot  fail  to  be  on  and  on,  till  every 
son  of  earth  shall  drink  in  rich  fruition,  the 
sorrow-quenching  draughts  of  perfect  lib- 
erty. Happy  day,  when,  all  appetites  con- 
trolled, all  passions  subdued,  all  matter  sub- 
jected, mind  all  conquering  mind  shall  live 


68  TEMPERANCE  ADDRESS 

and  move  the  monarch  of  the  world.  Glor- 
ious consummation!  Hail  fall  of  Fury! 
Reign  of  Reason,  all  hail! 

And  when  the  victory  shall  be  complete — 
when  there  shall  be  neither  a  slave  nor  a 
drunkard  on  the  earth — how  proud  the  title 
of  that  Land,  which  may  truly  claim  to  be 
the  birthplace  and  the  cradle  of  both  those 
revolutions,  that  shall  have  ended  in  that 
victory.  How  nobly  distinguished  that  Peo- 
ple who  shall  have  planted,  and  nurtured  to 
maturity,  both  the  political  and  moral  free- 
dom of  their  species. 

This  is  the  one  hundred  and  tenth  anni- 
versary of  the  birthday  of  Washington.  We 
are  met  to  celebrate  this  day.  Washington 
is  the  mightiest  name  of  earth — long  since 
mightiest  in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  still 
mightiest  in  moral  reformation.  On  that 
name  an  eulogy  is  expected.  It  cannot  be. 
To  add  brightness  to  the  sun,  or  glory  to 
the  name  of  Washington,  is  alike  impossible. 
Let  none  attempt  it.  In  solemn  awe  pro- 
nounce the  name,  and  in  its  naked  deathless 
splendor  leave  it  shining  on. 


The  above  is  an  exact  copy  as  published  in  the  Sangamo 
Journal,  Springfield,  111.,  March  26,  1842. 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS. 

Fellow-Citizens  of  the  United  States: 

In  compliance  with  a  custom  as  old  as  the 
Government  itself,  I  appear  before  you  to 
address  you  briefly  and  to  take  in  your  pres- 
ence the  oath  prescribed  by  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  to  be  taken  by  the 
President  "before  he  enters  on  the  execution 
of  his  office/' 

I  do  not  consider  it  necessary  at  present 
for  me  to  discuss  those  matters  of  adminis- 
tration about  which  there  is  no  special  anx- 
iety or  excitement. 

Apprehension  seems  to  exist  among  the 
people  of  the  Southern  States  that  by  the  ac- 
cession of  a  Republican  Administration  their 
property  and  their  peace  and  personal  se- 
curity are  to  be  endangered.  There  has  never 
been  any  reasonable  cause  for  such  apprehen- 
sion. Indeed,  the  most  ample  evidence  to  the 
contrary  has  all  the  while  existed  and  been 
open  to  their  inspection.  It  is  found  in  nearly 
all  the  published  speeches  of  him  who  now 
addresses  you.  I  do  but  quote  from  one  of 
those  speeches  when  I  declare  that — 


70  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

I  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere 
with  the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it  ex- 
ists. I  believe  I  have  no  lawful  right  to  do  so,  and  I 
have  no  inclination  to  do  so. 

Those  who  nominated  and  elected  me  did 
so  with  the  full  knowledge  that  I  had  made 
this  and  many  similar  declarations  and 
had  never  recanted  them;  and  more  than 
this,  they  placed  in  the  platform  for  my  ac- 
ceptance, and  as  a  law  to  themselves  and  to 
me,  the  clear  and  emphatic  resolution  which 
I  now  read : 

Resolved,  That  the  maintenance  inviolate  of  the  rights 
of  the  States,  and  especially  the  rights  of  each  State  to 
Order  and  control  its  own  domestic  institutions  according 
to  its  own  judgment  exclusively,  is  essential  to  that  bal- 
ance of  power  on  which  the  perfection  and  endurance  of 
our  political  fabric  depend;  and  we  denounce  the  lawless 
invasion  by  armed  force  of  the  soil  of  any  State  or  Ter- 
ritory, no  matter  under  what  pretext,  as  among  the 
gravest  of  crimes. 

I  now  reiterate  these  sentiments,  and  in 
doing  so  I  only  press  upon  the  public  atten- 
tion the  most  conclusive  evidence  of  which 
the  case  is  susceptible  that  the  property, 
peace,  and  security  of  no  section  are  to  be  in 
any  wise  endangered  by  the  now  incoming 
Administration.  I  add,  too,  that  all  the  pro- 
tection which,  consistently  with  the  Consti- 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  71 

tution  and  the  laws,  can  be  given  will  be 
cheerfully  given  to  all  the  States  when  law- 
fully demanded,  for  whatever  cause— as 
cheerfully  to  one  section  as  to  another. 

There  is  much  controversy  about  the  de- 
livering up  of  fugitives  from  service  or  labor. 
The  clause  I  now  read  is  as  plainly  written 
in  the  Constitution  as  any  other  of  its  pro- 
visions : 

No  person  held  to  service  or  labor  in  one  State,  under 
the  laws  thereof,  escaping  into  another,  shall  in  conse- 
quence of  any  law  or  regulation  therein  be  discharged 
from  such  service  or  labor,  but  shall  be  delivered  up  on 
claim  of  the  party  to  whom  such  service  or  labor  may  be 
due. 

It  is  scarcely  questioned  that  this  pro- 
vision was  intended  by  those  who  made  it 
for  the  reclaiming  of  what  we  call  fugitive 
slaves;  and  the  intention  of  the  lawgiver  is 
the  law.  All  members  of  Congress  swear 
their  support  to  the  whole  Constitution — to 
this  provision  as  much  as  to  any  other.  To 
the  proposition,  then,  that  slaves  whose  cases 

come  within  the  terms  of  this  clause  "shall 

• 

be  delivered  up"  their  oaths  are  unanimous. 
Now,  if  they  would  make  the  effort  in  good 
temper,  could  they  not  with  equal  unanimity 


72  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

frame  and  pass  a  law  by  means  of  which  to 
keep  good  that  unanimous  oath? 

There  is  some  difference  of  opinion 
whether  this  clause  should  be  enforced  by 
national  or  by  State  authority,  but  surely 
that  difference  is  not  a  very  material  one.  If 
the  slave  is  to  be  surrendered,  it  can  be  of 
but  little  consequence  to  him  or  to  others  by 
which  authority  it  is  done.  And  should  any- 
one in  any  case  be  content  that  his  oath  shall 
go  unkept  on  a  merely  unsubstantial  con- 
troversy as  to  how  it  shall  be  kept? 

Again:  In  any  law  upon  this  subject 
ought  not  all  the  safeguards  of  liberty  known 
in  civilized  and  humane  jurisprudence  to  be 
introduced,  so  that  a  free  man  be  not  in  any 
case  surrendered  as  a  slave?  And  might  it 
not  be  well  at  the  same  time  to  provide  by 
law  for  the  enforcement  of  that  clause  in  the 
Constitution  which  guarantees  that  "the 
citizens  of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  all 
privileges  and  immunities  of  citizens  in  the 
several  States"? 

I  take  the  official  oath  to-day  with  no  men- 
tal reservations  and  with  no  purpose  to  con- 
strue the  Constitution  or  laws  by  any  hyper- 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  73 

critical  rules;  and  while  I  do  not  choose  now 
to  specify  particular  acts  of  Congress  as 
proper  to  be  enforced,  I  do  suggest  that  it 
will  be  much  safer  for  all,  both  in  official  and 
private  stations,  to  conform  to  and  abide  by 
all  those  acts  which  stand  unrepealed  than 
to  violate  any  of  them  trusting  to  find  im- 
punity in  having  them  held  to  be  unconsti- 
tutional. 

It  is  seventy-two  years  since  the  first  in- 
auguration of  a  President  under  our  Na- 
tional Constitution.  During  that  period  fif- 
teen different  and  greatly  distinguished  citi- 
zens have  in  succession  administered  the 
executive  branch  of  the  Government.  They 
have  conducted  it  through  many  perils,  and 
generally  with  great  success.  Yet,  with  all 
this  scope  of  precedent,  I  now  enter  upon  the 
same  task  for  the  brief  constitutional  term  of 
four  years  under  great  and  peculiar  diffi- 
culty. A  disruption  of  the  Federal  Union, 
heretofore  only  menaced,  is  now  formidably 
attempted. 

I  hold  that  in  contemplation  of  universal 
law  and  of  the  Constitution  the  Union  of 
these  States  is  perpetual.  Perpetuity  is  im- 


74  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

plied,  if  not  expressed,  in  the  fundamental 
law  of  all  national  governments.  It  is  safe 
to  assert  that  no  government  proper  ever  had 
a  provision  in  its  organic  law  for  its  own  ter- 
mination. Continue  to  execute  all  the  ex- 
press provisions  of  our  National  Constitu- 
tion, and  the  Union  will  endure  forever,  it 
being  impossible  to  destroy  it  except  by 
some  action  not  provided  for  in  the  instru- 
ment itself. 

Again :  If  the  United  States  be  not  a  gov- 
ernment proper,  but  an  association  of  States 
in  the  nature  of  contract  merely,  can  it,  as  a 
contract,  be  peaceably  unmade  by  less  than 
all  the  parties  who  made  it?  One  party  to  a 
contract  may  violate  it — break  it,  so  to 
speak — but  does  it  not  require  all  to  lawfully 
rescind  it? 

Descending  from  these  general  principles, 
we  find  the  proposition  that  in  legal  contem- 
plation the  Union  is  perpetual  confirmed  by 
the  history  of  the  Union  itself.  The  Union 
is  much  older  than  the  Constitution.  It  was 
formed,  in  fact,  by  the  Articles  of  Associa- 
tion in  1774.  It  was  matured  and  continued 
by  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  1776. 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  75 

It  was  further  matured,  and  the  faith  of  all 
the  then  thirteen  States  expressly  plighted 
and  engaged  that  it  should  be  perpetual,  by 
the  Articles  of  Confederation  in  1778.  And 
finally,  in  1787,  one  of  the  declared  objects 
for  ordaining  and  establishing  the  Constitu- 
tion was  "to  form  a  more  perfect  Union." 

But  if  destruction  of  the  Union  by  one  or 
by  a  part  only  of  the  States  be  lawfully  pos- 
sible, the  Union  is  less  perfect  than  before 
the  Constitution,  having  lost  the  vital  ele- 
ment of  perpetuity. 

It  follows  from  these  views  that  no  State 
vtpon  its  own  mere  motion  can  lawfully  get 
out  of  the  Union;  that  resolves  and  ordi- 
nances to  that  effect  are  legally  void,  and  that 
acts  of  violence  within  any  State  or  States 
against  the  authority  of  the  United  States 
are  insurrectionary  or  revolutionary,  accord- 
ing to  circumstances. 

I  therefore  consider  that  in  view  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  laws  the  Union  is  un- 
broken, and  to  the  extent  of  my  ability  I  shall 
take  care,  as  the  Constitution  itself  expressly 
enjoins  upon  me,  that  the  laws  of  the  Union 
be  faithfully  executed  in  all  the  States.  Do- 


76  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

ing  this  I  deem  to  be  only  a  simple  duty  on 
my  part,  and  I  shall  perform  it  so  far  as  prac- 
ticable unless  my  rightful  masters,  the 
American  people,  shall  withhold  the  requis- 
ite means  or  in  some  authoritative  manner 
direct  the  contrary.  I  trust  this  will  not  be 
regarded  as  a  menace,  but  only  as  the  de- 
clared purpose  of  the  Union  that  it  will  con- 
stitutionally defend  and  maintain  itself. 

In  doing  this  there  needs  to  be  no  blood- 
shed or  violence,  and  there  shall  be  none  un- 
less it  be  forced  upon  the  national  authority. 
The  power  confided  to  me  will  be  used  to 
hold,  occupy,  and  possess  the  property  and 
places  belonging  to  the  Government  and  to 
collect  the  duties  and  imposts;  but  beyond 
what  may  be  necessary  for  these  objects, 
there  will  be  no  invasion,  no  using  of  force 
against  or  among  the  people  anywhere. 
Where  hostility  to  the  United  States  in  any 
interior  locality  shall  be  so  great  and  uni- 
versal as  to  prevent  competent  resident  citi- 
zens from  holding  the  Federal  offices,  there 
will  be  no  attempt  to  force  obnoxious 
strangers  among  the  people  for  that  object. 
While  the  strict  legal  right  may  exist  in  the 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  77 

Government  to  enforce  the  exercise  of  these 
offices,  the  attempt  to  do  so  would  be  so  ir- 
ritating and  so  nearly  impracticable  withal 
that  I  deem  it  better  to  forego  for  the  time 
the  uses  of  such  offices. 

The  mails,  unless  repelled,  will  continue 
to  be  furnished  in  all  parts  of  the  Union. 
So  far  as  possible  the  people  everywhere 
shall  have  that  sense  of  perfect  security 
which  is  most  favorable  to  calm  thought  and 
reflection.  The  course  here  indicated  will 
be  followed  unless  current  events  and  ex- 
perience shall  show  a  modification  or  change 
to  be  proper,  and  in  every  case  and  exigency 
my  best  discretion  will  be  exercised,  accord- 
ing to  circumstances  actually  existing  and 
with  a  view  and  a  hope  of  a  peaceful  solution 
of  the  national  troubles  and  the  restoration 
of  fraternal  sympathies  and  affections. 

That  there  are  persons  in  one  section  or 
another  who  seek  to  destroy  the  Union  at 
all  events  and  are  glad  of  any  pretext  to  do 
it  I  will  neither  affirm  nor  deny;  but  if  there 
be  such,  I  need  address  no  word  to  them. 
To  those,  however,  who  really  love  the 
Union  may  I  not  speak? 


78  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

Before  entering  upon  so  grave  a  matter  as 
the  destruction  of  our  national  fabric,  with 
all  its  benefits,  its  memories,  and  its  hopes, 
would  it  not  be  wise  to  ascertain  precisely 
why  we  do  it?  Will  you  hazard  so  desperate 
a  step  while  there  is  any  possibility  that  any 
portion  of  the  ills  you  fly  from  have  no  real 
existence?  Will  you,  while  the  certain  ills 
you  fly  to  are  greater  than  all  the  real  ones 
you  fly  from,  will  you  risk  the  commission  of 
so  fearful  a  mistake? 

All  profess  to  be  content  in  the  Union  if 
all  constitutional  rights  can  be  maintained. 
Is  it  true,  then,  that  any  right  plainly  writ- 
ten in  the  Constitution  has  been  denied?  I 
think  not.  Happily,  the  human  mind  is  so 
constituted  that  no  party  can  reach  to  the 
audacity  of  doing  this.  Think,  if  you  can,  of 
a  single  instance  in  which  a  plainly  written 
provision  of  the  Constitution  has  ever  been 
denied.  If  by  the  mere  force  of  numbers  a 
majority  should  deprive  a  minority  of  any 
clearly  written  constitutional  right,  it  might 
in  a  moral  point  of  view  justify  revolution; 
certainly  would  if  such  right  were  a  vital 
one.  But  such  is  not  our  case.  All  the  vital 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  79 

rights  of  minorities  and  of  individuals  are 
so  plainly  assured  to  them  by  affirmations 
and  negations,  guaranties  and  prohibi- 
tions, in  the  Constitution  that  controversies 
never  arise  concerning  them.  But  no  or- 
ganic law  can  ever  be  framed  with  a  pro- 
vision specifically  applicable  to  every  ques- 
tion which  may  occur  in  practical  adminis- 
tration. No  foresight  can  anticipate  nor 
any  document  of  reasonable  length  contain 
express  provisions  for  all  possible  questions. 
Shall  fugitives  from  labor  be  surrendered  by 
national  or  by  State  authority?  The  Consti- 
tution does  not  expressly  say.  May  Con- 
gress prohibit  slavery  in  the  Territories? 
The  Constitution  does  not  expressly  say. 
Must  Congress  protect  slavery  in  the  Terri- 
tories? The  Constitution  does  not  expressly 
say. 

From  questions  of  this  class  spring  all  our 
constitutional  controversies,  and  we  divide 
upon  them  into  majorities  and  minorities. 
If  the  minority  will  not  acquiesce,  the  ma- 
jority must,  or  the  Government  must  cease. 
There  is  no  other  alternative,  for  continuing 
the  Government  is  acquiescence  on  one  side 


80  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

or  the  other.  If  a  minority  in  such  case  will 
secede  rather  than  acquiesce,  they  make  a 
precedent  which  in  turn  will  divide  and  ruin 
them,  for  a  minority  of  their  own  will  se- 
cede from  them  whenever  a  majority  refuses 
to  be  controlled  by  such  minority.  For  in- 
stance, why  may  not  any  portion  of  a  new 
confederacy  a  year  or  two  hence  arbitrarily 
secede  again,  precisely  as  portions  of  the 
present  Union  now  claim  to  secede  from  it? 
All  who  cherish  disunion  sentiments  are 
now  being  educated  to  the  exact  temper  of 
doing  this. 

Is  there  such  perfect  identity  of  interests 
among  the  States  to  compose  a  new  union 
as  to  produce  harmony  only  and  prevent  re- 
newed secession? 

Plainly  the  central  idea  of  secession  is  the 
essence  of  anarchy.  A  majority  held  in  re- 
straint by  constitutional  checks  and  limita- 
tions, and  always  changing  easily  with  de- 
liberate changes  of  popular  opinions  and 
sentiments,  is  the  only  true  sovereign  of  a 
free  people.  Whoever  rejects  it  does  of  ne- 
cessity fly  to  anarchy  or  to  despotism.  Una- 
nimity is  impossible.  The  rule  of  a  minority, 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  81 

as  a  permanent  arrangement,  is  wholly  in- 
admissible; so  that,  rejecting  the  majority 
principle,  anarchy  or  despotism  in  some  form 
is  all  that  is  left. 

I  do  not  forget  the  position  assumed  by 
some  that  constitutional  questions  are  to  be 
decided  by  the  Supreme  Court,  nor  do  I  de- 
ny that  such  decisions  must  be  binding  in 
any  case  upon  the  parties  to  a  suit  as  to  the 
object  of  that  suit,  while  they  are  also  en- 
titled to  very  high  respect  and  consideration 
in  all  parallel  cases  by  all  other  departments 
of  the  Government.  And  while  it  is  obvious- 
ly possible  that  such  decision  may  be  erron- 
eous in  any  given  case,  still  the  evil  effect 
following  it,  being  limited  to  that  particular 
case,  with  the  chance  that  it  may  be  over- 
ruled and  never  become  a  precedent  for 
other  cases,  can  better  be  borne  than  could 
the  evils  of  a  different  practice.  At  the  same 
time,  the  candid  citizen  must  confess  that  if 
the  policy  of  the  Government  upon  vital 
questions  affecting  the  whole  people  is  to  be 
irrevocably  fixed  by  decisions  of  the  Su- 
preme Court,  the  instant  they  are  made  in 
ordinary  litigation  between  parties  in  per- 
sonal actions  the  people  will  have  ceased  to 


82  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

be  their  own  rulers,  having  to  that  extent 
practically  resigned  their  Government  into 
the  hands  of  that  eminent  tribunal.  Nor  is 
there  in  this  view  any  assault  upon  the  court 
or  the  judges.  It  is  a  duty  from  which  they 
may  not  shrink  to  decide  cases  properly 
brought  before  them,  and  it  is  no  fault  of 
theirs  if  others  seek  to  turn  their  decisions 
to  political  purposes. 

One  section  of  our  country  believes  slav- 
ery is  right  and  ought  to  be  extended,  while 
the  other  believes  it  is  wrong  and  ought  not 
to  be  extended.  This  is  the  only  substan- 
tial dispute.  The  fugitive-slave  clause  of 
the  Constitution  and  the  law  for  the  supres- 
sion  of  the  foreign  slave  trade  are  each  as 
well  enforced,  perhaps,  as  any  law  can  ever 
be  in  a  community  where  the  moral  sense 
of  the  people  imperfectly  supports  the  law 
itself.  The  great  body  of  the  people  abide 
by  the  dry  legal  obligation  in  both  cases, 
and  a  few  break  over  in  each.  This,  I  think, 
can  not  be  perfectly  cured,  and  it  would  be 
worse  in  both  cases  after  the  separation  of 
the  sections  than  before.  The  foreign  slave 
trade,  now  imperfectly  suppressed,  would 
be  ultimately  revived  without  restriction  in 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  83 

one  section,  while  fugitive  slaves,  now  only 
partially  surrendered,  would  not  be  surren- 
dered at  all  by  the  other. 

Physically  speaking,  we  can  not  separate. 
We  cannot  remove  our  respective  sections 
from  each  other  nor  build  an  impassable 
wall  between  them.  A  husband  and  wife 
may  be  divorced  and  go  out  of  the  presence 
and  beyond  the  reach  of  each  other,  but  the 
different  parts  of  our  country  cannot  do  this. 
They  cannot  but  remain  face  to  face,  and  in- 
tercourse, either  amicable  or  hostile,  must 
continue  between  them.  Is  it  possible,  then, 
to  make  that  intercourse  more  advantageous 
or  more  satisfactory  after  separation  than 
before?  Can  aliens  make  treaties  easier  than 
friends  can  make  laws?  Can  treaties  be  more 
faithfully  enforced  between  aliens  than  laws 
can  among  friends?  Suppose  you  go  to  war, 
you  cannot  fight  always;  and  when,  after 
much  loss  on  both  sides  and  no  gain  on 
either,  you  cease  fighting,  the  identical  old 
questions,  as  to  terms  of  intercourse,  are 
again  upon  you. 

This  country,  with  its  institutions,  be- 
longs to  the  people  who  inhabit  it.  When- 
ever they  shall  grow  weary  of  the  existing 


84  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

Government,  they  can  exercise  their  consti- 
tutional right  of  amending  it  or  their  revolu- 
tionary right  to  dismember  or  overthrow  it. 
I  cannot  be  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  many 
worthy  and  patriotic  citizens  are  desirous  of 
having  the  National  Constitution  amended. 
While  I  make  no  recommendation  of 
amendments,  I  fully  recognize  the  rightful 
authority  of  the  people  over  the  whole  sub- 
ject, to  be  exercised  in  either  of  the  modes 
prescribed  in  the  instrument  itself;  and  I 
should,  under  existing  circumstances,  favor 
rather  than  oppose  a  fair  opportunity  being 
afforded  the  people  to  act  upon  it.  I  will 
venture  to  add  that  to  me  the  convention 
mode  seems  preferable,  in  that  it  allows 
amendments  to  originate  with  the  people 
themselves,  instead  of  only  permitting  them 
to  take  or  reject  propositions  originated  by 
others,  not  especially  chosen  for  the  pur- 
pose, and  which  might  not  be  precisely  such 
as  they  would  wish  to  either  accept  or  refuse. 
I  understand  a  proposed  amendment  to  the 
Constitution — which  amendment,  however, 
I  have  not  seen — has  passed  Congress,  to  the 
effect  that  the  Federal  Government  shall 
never  interfere  with  the  domestic  institu- 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  85 

tions  of  the  States,  including  that  of  persons 
held  to  service.  To  avoid  misconstruction 
of  what  I  have  said,  I  depart  from  my  pur- 
pose not  to  speak  of  particular  amendments 
so  far  as  to  say  that,  holding  such  a  provision 
to  now  be  implied  constitutional  law,  I  have 
no  objection  to  its  being  made  express  and 
irrevocable. 

The  Chief  Magistrate  derives  all  his  au- 
thority from  the  people,  and  they  have  con- 
ferred none  upon  him  to  fix  terms  for  the 
separation  of  the  States.  The  people  them- 
selves can  do  this  also  if  they  choose,  but  the 
Executive  as  such  has  nothing  to  do  with 
it.  His  duty  is  to  administer  the  present 
Government  as  it  came  to  his  hands  and  to 
transmit  it  unimpaired  by  him  to  his  suc- 
cessor. 

Why  should  there  not  be  a  patient  confi- 
dence in  the  ultimate  justice  of  the  people? 
Is  there  any  better  or  equal  hope  in  the 
world?  In  our  present  differences,  is  either 
party  without  faith  of  being  in  the  right? 
If  the  Almighty  Ruler  of  Nations,  with  His 
eternal  truth  and  justice,  be  on  your  side  of 
the  North,  or  on  yours  of  the  South  that 
truth  and  that  justice  will  surely  prevail  by 


86  FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

the  judgment  of  this  great  tribunal  of  the 
American  people. 

By  the  frame  of  the  Government  under 
which  we  live  this  same  people  have  wisely 
given  their  public  servants  but  little  power 
for  mischief,  and  have  with  equal  wisdom 
provided  for  the  return  of  that  little  to  their 
own  hands  at  very  short  intervals.  While 
the  people  retain  their  virtue  and  vigilance 
no  Administration  by  any  extreme  of  wick- 
edness or  folly  can  very  seriously  injure  the 
Government  in  the  short  space  of  four  years. 

My  countrymen,  one  and  all,  think  calmly 
and  well  upon  this  whole  subject.  Nothing 
valuable  can  be  lost  by  taking  time.  If  there 
be  an  object  to  hurry  any  of  you  in  hot  haste 
to  a  step  which  you  would  never  take  delib- 
erately, that  object  will  be  frustrated  by  tak- 
ing time;  but  no  good  object  can  be  frus- 
trated by  it.  Such  of  you  as  are  now  dis- 
satisfied still  have  the  old  Constitution  un- 
impaired, and,  on  the  sensitive  point,  the 
laws  of  your  own  framing  under  it;  while 
the  new  Administration  will  have  no  im- 
mediate power,  if  it  would,  to  change  either. 
If  it  were  admitted  that  you  who  are  dis- 
satisfied hold  the  right  side  in  the  dispute, 


FIRST  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  87 

there  still  is  no  single  good  reason  for  pre- 
cipitate action.  Intelligence,  patriotism, 
Christianity,  and  a  firm  reliance  on  Him 
who  has  never  yet  forsaken  this  favored  land 
are  still  competent  to  adjust  in  the  best  way 
all  our  present  difficulty. 

In  your  hands,  my  dissatisfied  fellow- 
countrymen,  and  not  in  mine,  is  the  momen- 
tous issue  of  civil  war.  The  Government 
will  not  assail  you.  You  can  have  no  con- 
flict without  being  yourselves  the  aggres- 
sors. You  have  no  oath  registered  in  heaven 
to  destroy  the  Government,  while  /  shall 
have  the  most  solemn  one  to  "preserve,  pro- 
tect, and  defend  it." 

I  am  loath  to  close.  We  are  not  enemies, 
but  friends.  We  must  not  be  enemies. 
Though  passion  may  have  strained  it  must 
not  break  our  bonds  of  affection.  The  mystic 
chords  of  memory,  stretching  from  every 
battlefield  and  patriot  grave  to  every  living 
heart  and  hearthstone  all  over  this  broad 
land,  will  yet  swell  the  chorus  of  the  Union, 
when  again  touched,  as  surely  they  will  be, 
by  the  better  angels  of  our  nature. 

March  4,  1861. 


SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS. 

FELLOW-COUNTKYMEN  :  At  this  second  ap- 
pearing to  take  the  oath  of  the  Presidential 
office  there  is  less  occasion  for  an  extended 
address  than  there  was  at  the  first.  Then  a 
statement  somewhat  in  detail  of  a  course  to 
be  pursued  seemed  fitting  and  proper.  Now, 
at  the  expiration  of  four  years,  during  whicn 
public  declarations  have  been  constantly 
called  forth  on  every  point  and  phase  of  the 
great  contest  which  still  absorbs  the  atten- 
tion and  engrosses  the  energies  of  the  na- 
tion, little  that  is  new  could  be  presented. 
The  progress  of  our  arms,  upon  which  all 
else  chiefly  depends,  is  as  well  known  to  the 
public  as  to  myself,  and  it  is,  I  trust,  reason- 
ably satisfactory  and  encouraging  to  all. 
With  high  hope  for  the  future,  no  prediction 
in  regard  to  it  is  ventured. 

On  the  occasion  corresponding  to  this 
four  years  ago  all  thoughts  were  anxiously 
directed  to  an  impending  civil  war.  All 
dreaded  it,  all  sought  to  avert  it.  While  the 
inaugural  address  was  being  delivered  from 


SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  89 

this  place,  devoted  altogether  to  saving  the 
Union  without  war,  insurgent  agents  were 
in  the  city  seeking  to  destroy  it  without  war 
— seeking  to  dissolve  the  Union  and  divide 
effects  by  negotiation.  Both  parties  depre- 
cated war,  but  one  of  them  would  make  war 
rather  than  let  the  nation  survive,  and  the 
other  would  accept  war  rather  than  let  it 
perish,  and  the  war  came. 

One-eighth  of  the  whole  population  were 
colored  slaves,  not  distributed  generally 
over  the  Union,  but  localized  in  the  southern 
part  of  it.  These  slaves  constituted  a  pe- 
culiar and  powerful  interest.  All  knew  that 
this  interest  was  somehow  the  cause  of  the 
war.  To  strengthen,  perpetuate,  and  ex- 
tend this  interest  was  the  object  for  which 
the  insurgents  would  rend  the  Union  even 
by  war,  while  the  Government  claimed  no 
right  to  do  more  than  to  restrict  the  terri- 
torial enlargement  of  it.  Neither  party  ex- 
pected for  the  war  the  magnitude  or  the  du- 
ration which  it  has  already  attained.  Neither 
anticipated  that  the  cause  of  ithe  conflict 
might  cease  with  or  even  before  the  conflict 
itself  should  cease.  Each  looked  for  an  easier 


90  SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

triumph,  and  a  result  less  fundamental  and 
astounding.  Both  read  the  same  Bible  and 
pray  to  the  same  God,  and  each  invokes  His 
aid  against  the  other,  j  It  may  seem  strange 
that  any  men  should  dare  to  ask  a  just  God's 
assistance  in  wringing  their  bread  from  the 
sweat  of  other  men's  faces,  but  let  us  judge 
not,  that  we  be  not  judged.*  The  prayers  of 
both  could  not  be  answered.  That  of  neither 
has  been  answered  fully.  The  Almighty  has 
His  own  purposes.  "Woe  unto  the  world 
because  of  offenses;  for  it  must  needs  be 
that  offenses  come,  but  woe  to  that  man  by 
whom  the  offense  cometh."  If  we  shall  sup- 
pose that  American  slavery  is  one  of  those 
offenses  which,  in  the  providence  of  God, 
must  needs  come,  but  which,  having  con- 
tinued through  His  appointed  time,  He  now 
wills  to  remove,  and  that  He  gives  to  both 
North  and  South  this  terrible  war  as  the  woe 
due  to  those  by  whom  the  offense  came, 
shall  we  discern  therein  any  departure  from 
those  divine  attributes  which  the  believers 
in  a  living  God  always  ascribe  'to  Him? 
Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we  pray, 
that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may  speed- 


SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  91 

ily  pass  away.  Yet,  if  God  wills  that  it  con- 
tinue until  all  the  wealth  piled  by  the  bonds- 
man's two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unre- 
quited toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every  drop 
of  blood  drawn  with  the  lashshall  be  paid 
by  another  drawn_with__the_sword,  as  was 
said  three  thousand  years  ago,  so  still  it  must 
be  said  "the  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true 
and  righteous  altogether." 

With  malice  toward  none,  with  charity 
for  all,  with  firmness  in  the  right  as  Gojl 
gives  us  to  see  the  right  let  us  strive  on  to 
finish  the  work  we  are  in,  to  bind  up  the  na- 
tion's wounds,  to  care  for  him  who  shall  have 
borne  the  battle  and  for  his  widow  and  his 
orphan,  to  do  all  which  may  achieve  and 
cherish  a  just  and  lasting  peace  among  our- 
selves and  with  all  nations. 

March  4,  1865, 


PROCLAMATION. 

BY  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA. 
A  PROCLAMATION. 

Whereas  on  the  22nd  day  of  September,  A. 
D.  1862,  a  proclamation  was  issued  by  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  containing, 
among  other  things,  the  following  to-wit: 

That  on  the  1st  day  of  January,  A.  D.  1863,  all  persons 
held  as  slaves  within  any  State  or  designated  part  of 
a  State  the  people  whereof  shall  then  be  in  rebellion 
against  the  United  States  shall  be  then,  thenceforward, 
and  forever  free;  and  the  executive  government  of  the 
United  States,  including  the  military  and  naval  author- 
ity thereof,  will  recognize  and  maintain  the  freedom  of 
such  persons  and  will  do  no  act  or  acts  to  repress  such 
persons,  or  any  of  them,  in  any  efforts  they  may  make 
for  their  actual  freedom. 

That  the  Executive  will,  on  the  1st  day  of  January 
aforesaid,  by  proclamation,  designate  the  States  and  parts 
of  States,  if  any,  in  which  people  thereof,  respectively, 
shall  then  be  in  rebellion  against  the  United  States;  and 
the  fact  that  any  State  or  the  people  thereof  shall  on  that 
day  be  in  good  faith  represented  in  the  Congress  of 
the  United  States  by  members  chosen  thereto  at  elections 
wherein  a  majority  of  the  qualified  voters  of  such  States 
shall  have  participated  shall,  in  the  absence  of  strong 
countervailing  testimony,  be  deemed  conclusive  evidence 
that  such  State  and  the  people  thereof  are  not  then  in  re- 
bellion against  the  United  States. 

Now,    therefore,    I,    Abraham    Lincoln, 


A    PROCLAMATION  93 

President  of  the  United  States,  by  virtue  of 
the  power  in  me  vested  as  Commander  in 
Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy  of  the  United 
States  in  time  of  actual  armed  rebellion 
against  the  authority  and  Government  of 
the  United  States,  and  as  a  fit  and  necessary 
war  measure  for  suppressing  said  rebellion, 
do,  on  this  1st  day  of  January,  A.  D.  1863, 
and  in  accordance  with  my  purpose  so  to  do, 
publicly  proclaimed  for  the  full  period  of 
one  hundred  days  from  the  day  first  above 
mentioned,  order  and  designate  as  the  States 
and  parts  of  States  wherein  the  people  there- 
of, respectively,  are  this  day  in  rebellion 
against  the  United  States  the  following,  to- 
wit: 

Arkansas,  Texas,  Louisiana  (except  the 
parishes  of  St.  Bernard,  Plaquemines,  Jef- 
ferson, St.  John,  St.  Charles,  St.  James,  As- 
cension, Assumption,  Terrebonne,  La- 
fourche,  St.  Mary,  St.  Martin,  and  Orleans, 
including  the  city  of  New  Orleans),  Miss- 
issippi, Alabama,  Florida,  Georgia,  South 
Carolina,  North  Carolina,  and  Virginia 
(except  the  forty-eight  counties  desig- 
nated as  West  Virginia,  and  also  the  coun- 


94  A   PROCLAMATION 

ties  of  Berkeley,  Accomac,  Northampton, 
Elizabeth  City,  York,  Princess  Anne,  and 
Norfolk,  including  the  cities  of  Norfolk  and 
Portsmouth),  and  which  excepted  parts  are 
for  the  present  left  precisely  as  if  this  proc- 
lamation were  not  issued. 

And  by  virtue  of  the  power  and  for  the 
purpose  aforesaid,  I  do  order  and  declare 
that  all  persons  held  as  slaves  within  said 
designated  States  and  parts  of  States  are 
and  henceforward  shall  be  free,  and  that 
the  executive  government  of  the  United 
States,  including  the  military  and  naval  au- 
thorities thereof,  will  recognize  and  main- 
tain the  freedom  of  said  persons. 

And  I  hereby  enjoin  upon  the  people  so 
declared  to  be  free  to  abstain  from  all  vio- 
lence, unless  in  necessary  self-defense;  and 
I  recommend  to  them  that  in  all  cases  when 
allowed  they  labor  faithfully  for  reasonable 
wages. 

And  I  further  declare  and  make  known 
that  such  persons  of  suitable  condition  will 
be  received  into  the  armed  service  of  the 
United  States  to  garrison  forts,  positions, 
stations,  and  other  places  and  to  man  ves- 
sels of  all  sorts  in  said  service. 


A  PROCLAMATION  95 


And  upon  this  act,  sincerely  believed  to 
be  an  act  of  justice,  warranted  by  the  Con- 
stitution upon  military  necessity,  I  invoke 
the  considerate  judgment  of  mankind  and 
the  gracious  favor  of  Almighty  God. 

In  witness  whereof  I  have  hereunto  set 
my  hand  and  caused  the  seal  of  the  United 
States  to  be  affixed. 

Done  at  the  city  of  Washington, 
this  1st  day  of  January,  A.  D.  1863, 
(seal.)  and    of    the    Independence    of    the 
United  States  of  America  the  eighty- 
seventh. 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
By  the  President: 
William  H.  Seward,    Secretary  of  State. 


LINCOLN'S  GETTYSBURG  ADDRESS. 

Four  score  and  seven  years  ago  our  fath- 
ers brought  forth  upon  this  continent  a  new 
nation,  conceived  in  liberty,  and  dedicated 
to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created 
equal. 

Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil  war, 
testing  whether  that  nation,  or  any  nation, 
so  conceived  and  so  dedicated,  can  long  en- 
dure. We  are  met  on  a  great  battlefield  of 
that  war.  We  are  met  to  dedicate  a  portion 
of  it  as  the  final  resting  place  of  those  who 
here  gave  their  lives  that  that  nation  might 
live.  It  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper  that 
we  should  do  this. 

But,  in  a  larger  sense,  we  cannot  dedicate 
— we  cannot  consecrate — we  cannot  hallow 
this  ground.  The  brave  men,  living  and 
dead,  who  struggled  here,  have  consecrated 


THE  GETTYSBURG  ADDRESS  97 

it  far  above  our  power  to  add  or  detract. 
The  world  will  little  note,  nor  long  remem- 
ber, what  we  say  here,  but  it  can  never  for- 
get what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the  liv- 
ing, rather  to  be  dedciated  here  to  the  un- 
finished work  that  they  have  thus  far  so 
nobly  carried  on.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  be 
here  dedicated  to  the  great  task  remaining 
before  us, — that  from  these  honored  dead 
we  take  increased  devotion  to  the  cause  for 
which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  de- 
votion,— that  we  here  highly  resolve  that 
the  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain;  that  the 
nation  shall,  under  God,  have  a  new  birth 
of  freedom,  and  that  the  government  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people, 
shall  not  perish  from  the  earth. 


The  above  is  the  standard  and  authentic  text  made  four 
days  after  its  delivery,  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  to  be  placed  with 
records  of  the  Gettysburg  Cemetery  Association. 


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Cyclopedia  of  Prohibition.  Cloth,  670  pp.,  postpaid  .  .  2  25 
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